[IPython-dev] PyCon Canada keynote went great: thanks to all of you for making me look good!

[Fernando Perez]

Hi folks,

I just completed a mini-marathon with two talks at U. Toronto and the
closing keynote for PyCon Canada, which went unusually well.  It's not
very often that I get two or three applause interruptions during a
conference talk and a standing ovation at the end.  I really, really
want to thank everyone here who is basically working so hard to
ultimately make me look good; I feel almost like I'm stealing a
thunder that collectively is nothing but the result of *your* work.

When I started IPython, back in 2001, it was basically a crazy excuse
to not work on my dissertation and a way to teach myself Python (I'd
read about the language a few weeks earlier and IPython was my first
Python program).  I had to justify to my classmates (and later
colleagues) why I thought there was any value in this, when all they
saw was a 'pastime that was distracting me from doing real and useful
work'.  Seeing the wider community accept it now should make all of us
proud.

I especially want to thank Brian and Min, who did believe the crazy
original idea that controlling one interactive interpreter well was
the right core abstraction to build an interactive parallel computing
library, back in 2004/5.  They poured their amazing talent (and
patience) into this effort, and there's no way we'd be where we are
without them: I'm positive I would have abandoned IPython some time
back if we hadn't had this small but dedicated team that believed
there were genuinely good ideas worth persevering for.  Ville was also
instrumental in keeping things moving forward in that period, even if
he has now moved on to work on other projects.   And in the last few
years,  things have really taken off,  with first Thomas, then
Matthias, Paul, Brad, Evan, JD March, Jorgen, David W-F and everyone
else who now keeps us forever behind on our pull request queue.

Really, thanks to all of you for keeping such an amazing project
moving forward.  The reception we are getting is a testament to the
fact that we are doing things right, and all the real credit goes to
you guys.

I'm going to crash now, and with David W-F's help will tomorrow see
how many candidates we get for sprints work here in Toronto.  It will
feel good to get back to code, given how the last few months have been
pretty much nothing but grants, travel and talks...

Cheers,

f

ps - if anyone is curious, my slides are here, but it's fairly similar
material to what I have in other talks (just presented with a
different emphasis for this audience):
https://speakerdeck.com/fperez/science-and-python-a-interactively-biased-retrospective-of-a-mostly-successful-decade

I'll post the video link once it's up.