PyDev of the Week: Rami Chowdhury

This week we welcome Rami Chowdhury (@necaris) as our PyDev of the Week! Rami is an active contributor to the Python community and an organization for the North American PyCon. If you'd like to see what he's up to, you might want to check out his website which has links to the various open source repositories that he contributes to. Let's take a few moments to get to know him better!

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

I was always interested in and a pretty fearless user of computers when I was younger, but I went to college to study political science and economics (in the UK) and only stumbled into programming then. It felt a bit like I'd found my calling. In my spare time I'm making a concerted effort _not_ to write more code, and I've taken up knitting as a way to occupy my hands. I also enjoy reading, wandering the museums of my hometown (Washington DC), and playing with my dachshund Wesley.

Why did you start using Python?

I was writing Perl CGI scripts for my college's limited web-hosting service when I came across Eric Raymond's "Why Python" essay -- which sparked my interest. I started using it for its broad and useful standard library, the readability of the documentation (and resulting code), and because it was already installed on the Linux machines available to me.

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

As a full-stack web developer I'm fluent in Python and Javascript (and dialects thereof), but I'm also somewhat familiar with PHP, Clojure, Java, Erlang, C, and Go. I read something recent about programming languages and language communities being cultures and subcultures in their own right, and Python remains my favorite not just because I can use it for pretty much everything, but also because I enjoy being a member of that culture.

What projects are you working on now?

I'm lucky enough to work mostly in Python, so outside of work I'm playing with projects that allow me to learn new languages and technologies -- one web-based app that's letting me play with Elm and aiohttp, and a file format parser that's helping me teach myself Rust.

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

Core: __future__ 😉 Third-party: tornado

Thanks so much for doing the interview!