PyDev of the Week: Facundo Batista

This week we have Facundo Batista (@facundobatista) joining us.

He is a Python Core developer from Argentina. If you happen to speak Spanish, then you might enjoy his blog. Let's spend some time getting to know Facundo!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

I’m a specialist in the Python programming language. With an experience
in it of more than 8 years, I’m Core Developer of the language, and
member by merit of the Python Software Foundation. Also, received the
2009 Community Service Award for organizing PyCon Argentina and the
Argentinian Python community as well as contributions to the standard
library and work in translating the Python documentation.

Also love playing tennis, have a one year kid that is a wonderful little
person, and enjoy taking photos.

Why did you start using Python?

I needed to process some logs server-side, when I was working in
Movistar ~14 years ago.

Servers were running SunOS (!). I knew C and other languages not really
suited to do that task. I learned and used Perl for some months, until I
found Python and fell in love.

What other programming languages do you know and which is your favorite?

I have experience and worked with (although I won't be able to use them
nowadays without some re-learning) COBOL, Clipper, Basic, C, C++, Java
and Perl.

My favourite of course is Python 😉

What projects are you working on now?

I'm actively working on three projects:

• CDPedia: it's a way to compress and build the whole Wikipedia to be used offline. The output can be a CD, DVD, or just a tarball, that automatically runs on Linux, Mac, or Windows, without needing anything else installed. It aims to be a source of information for schools/people that still don't have internet access. Currently we're packaging only the Spanish wikipedia, but we're almost ready to start with other languages
• Encuentro: it's a desktop program to select and download a lot of educational documentaries from Argentine public television (which is really awesome these days). The site and program itself are in Spanish, as the TV episodes are only in that language.
• Linkode: Linkode is the useful pastebin! It's a kind of short living collaboration space, a dynamic pastebin. Some awesome details:

  You can create linkodes anywhere, whenever, and effortlessly.
  Editable texts, not static!
  Every new edition creates a child: you have a tree
  Code/text type autodetection (and coloring!)
  Permanent linkodes (but still the owner can remove them)
  Absolutely anonymous (unless you login, which is dead simple)
  Private URLs: because you can not guess UUIDs

Which Python libraries are your favorite (core or 3rd party)?

I really love the itertools core lib. And of course the decimal one,
that I wrote ;).

Regarding external libs, I'm a fan of Twisted, and these days I use a
lot BeautifulSoup.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Thanks for the interview!

Previous PyDevs of the Week

• Ben Rousch