A recap of the just-completed Django on the Med Pescara, Italy edition and catching up on summer Django news.
🔗 Links
📚 Books
🎥 YouTube
Will (00:01)
Hello, welcome to another episode of Django Chat. I'm Will Vincent with Carlton Gibson. Hey Carlton.
Carlton (00:07)
Hello world, welcome back.
Will (00:08)
Yeah, we're back. We did a sneak peek one for the developer survey, but this is the first start of the fall season, so
Carlton (00:15)
The long, the long stretch through till Christmas now.
Will (00:19)
And even this is number two hundred and six. It still took us what, twenty minutes to figure out the logistics of the technology. So
Carlton (00:25)
Just
getting the pipes lined up so they actually connect to each other is harder than it should be.
Will (00:32)
Yeah. Yep. Okay, well, you look tanned and rested. Tell us where have you been?
Carlton (00:37)
Well, I've just got back from Pescara in Brutso in Italy where we had the second episode of Django and the Med where 25 of us got together and spent three days working on Django. So I guess we're going to talk 15
Will (00:49)
It's growing, right? I said it's g it's growing like a cancer. It's doubling.
Carlton (00:54)
last year and no, we're not going to do it in Dublin. That would be in the North Sea.
Will (00:54)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carlton (00:59)
Sorry, not even the North Sea, the Atlantic. Anyway, let's leave that one for kids. Yeah,
Will (01:04)
Okay, so twenty five. Twenty five, yep.
Carlton (01:06)
25. We had 15 last time and we had 25 this time. So obviously growing. think the last time was a bit of a punt. was an untried thing and so only the very brave could make it. This time it was a slightly more of a known commodity and so actually we had a capacity limit. We weren't sold out because didn't sell anything but it was free to attend but the tickets were
sold out and not more over a month in advance so that's really that's
Will (01:33)
Wow.
Carlton (01:33)
really nice.
Will (01:35)
Well, it's so I feel like a a grandparent seeing you and Paolo spend all this, you know, this idea, the glint in the eye of what if we had you know, Paulo's been talking this for years and years. And
Carlton (01:46)
Yeah.
Will (01:46)
then and you've done your part, but I've seen Paolo in person at PyCon US, EuroPython, DjangoCon US. He's, you know, relentless with letting people know about this. So
That's exciting. I mean we'll we'll get to there's some stuff that you worked on that came out of it and we'll sort of do a deep dive for people who missed it.
Carlton (02:03)
Yeah, we'll talk bit more
about the event. But I'm sure we've done more than just that. That was last week. What was the rest of the things? What about you?
Will (02:10)
Yeah, well
so the summer. I have some notes here. we'll s we'll skip over some spicy takes, you know. G I'll just say a glad we're not the Rails community. Let's leave it at that. so DjangoCon US in Chicago, that was last month. great, so nice to see people. I missed
Carlton (02:28)
Yeah.
Will (02:28)
DjangoCon Europe in Athens. so got to go to the PyCon US and EuroPython, so it's nice to be in like a cozy Django little world.
I gave my deployment speech, which I've given this year, super focused on Django. So that I think that went well. and just for people who don't know, because you're not so subscribed to the Django newsletter, Django has finished, I think, an executive director search, or that's still ongoing. There's been some tech governance changes, right? The steering council, as well as versioning.
Carlton (03:00)
Yes,
so we got two big depths approved over the summer. So one was, we'll go backwards because depth 20 was approved before depth 19. depth 20 was the move to the annual release cycles, which
Will (03:15)
Yes.
Carlton (03:16)
very
Will (03:16)
So good. So good.
Carlton (03:17)
excited about. The goal there was twofold really. One was to bring Django better in line with the Python release cycles. Since Python, I don't know, a few years ago went annually cycles with the Daniels old Django's old release cycles leading this in leading this sort of well out of sync with that. So Django 4.2, we just went out of life. I think we're still supporting Django 3.8, which had been end of life for 18 months before Django. And
Will (03:42)
Mm-hmm.
Carlton (03:44)
we don't want to be supporting end of life.
Python.
is a start but so we want to get better and a better cadence in line with the Python's release cycle and also to eliminate this gap between LTS releases so we've had every third release being an LTS which has three years of extended support well that that would mean that people would stay on the old LTS and what's going to happen from Django 2028 which will be the first version of Django under the new system every single version will get that same three years of support and the idea being that if
want to be on a long-term support version, well that's fine, you can still update and get the fixes that come in on the new version,
Will (04:24)
Right.
Carlton (04:24)
as well as the features. People are hanging around on the old LTS, it's often about the fixes rather than the features, but
Will (04:31)
Right. Right.
Carlton (04:33)
we wanted to have carrot and stick.
Will (04:35)
Yeah.
No, it made it makes so much sense. I mean, and the old system made total sense when it was first done. but this is I mean, even PyCharm, my day job, you know, we have an annual release cycle and it just makes so
Carlton (04:48)
Yeah.
Will (04:49)
much sense. And you know, to the extent there's humans making content, it makes it easier to say this is not out of date. that's
Carlton (04:55)
Yeah.
Will (04:56)
me sliding in. So last night, if I seem extra tired, I finished, finished, finished Django for Beginners updates. So for six one, maybe I won't subject people to a whole
Episode on it, but I've actually gonna have one book instead of three. So I moved the API's book into a chapter or two, I slimmed down the professionals book into a chapter or two, and I'm just gonna be
So I won't get rid of the old versions, they'll still be accessible to people who want but one book up to date and then I guess twenty twenty eight will be the next update. So I'll
Carlton (05:29)
Yeah.
Will (05:30)
I'll subject people when I have a cover. It's not real until I have a cover. You know, for me to be like, all the text is updated, all the code is updated, it's like, I wanna see the cover. So
Carlton (05:38)
So at this point, will you sort of phrase it as 6.x,
Will (05:42)
Mm-hmm.
Carlton (05:42)
so for the 6.2 LTS to come up and then...
Will (05:45)
I'm well
I've been calling it six sixth edition and I'll try to make clear six one. But it's I I should be with one book I should be able to just bump it every eight months.
I I I it it's not as simple as bumping it. people don't want to hear me lament being a technical booth author book
Carlton (06:03)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Will (06:05)
author, but it's like it's the least of it to do it. But it should be much more manageable. and so I'm excited about that because there are there's a ton of new stuff with you know, mailers and then the fetch modes and
And at the same time, the Professionals book had a lot i is the one that's a bit old, had a lot of Docker stuff. Like I feel like that's that's a nut that's hard to crack. So even though it's Django for beginners, it's really takes you into some professional territory. and it's just yeah, anyways, I'm doing the plug for the book that wasn't gonna do, but I'm just excited because I stayed up last night
Carlton (06:38)
No.
Will (06:39)
and finally finished it. So
Carlton (06:41)
think in this day and age, I think the value of the book is the kind high level understanding and certainly tooling can help us to produce the exact Docker file we need this week. But the understanding
Will (06:55)
Yeah.
Carlton (06:56)
of the general principles around deployment, that's something that a human can bring to the table at a higher level, I think.
Will (07:03)
Yeah. and also I found out this summer, Sarah Abdermain is one of the two authors updating Django by example, which is the other ongoing book. so when they have an update, we'll bring her on and we can have a book off and talk.
Carlton (07:16)
And I think Giuliano
who was at Django on the Med might be one of the other authors.
Will (07:20)
There's I f I'm s I'm
sorry, I know there's another, I don't know who it is, yeah.
Carlton (07:24)
Yeah, I think
it's Giuliana. She was writing a chapter on Django tasks. She was bemoaning to me not give them giving her enough pages to do it full justice. Okay, we will have a tech author support group on the podcast one episode this season. So that anyway,
Will (07:30)
See this this is what I need, Carlton. I need fellow tech authors to like Okay. All right, but anyways, that's that's coming very soon. I think this
Carlton (07:42)
that was the annual release cycle which depth 20 and then the technical governments which was depth 19
Will (07:45)
Ha ha ha.
Carlton (07:47)
was about the
governing rule. So DEP 10 was the one which when we moved from the old core developer mailing list, the private core developer mailing list and retired the core developer label and the old team there and we had DEP 10 which was super. It got us out of the history but it turned out to be quite legalistic and difficult to work with and so the idea in DEP 19 is to very much loosen the fields and
have something slightly more human, slightly more fitted to the scale of organization that Django really is. We're a very small and tight community and sometimes trying to legislate for situations which are far removed from the norm, didn't leave the day to day. You're working with Dep 10 and then Dep 12, we were trying to clarify.
It wasn't that easy. so the big,
Will (08:45)
Yeah.
Carlton (08:46)
the Tim Schilling has worked on that very heavily. So full credit to him. He really has pushed that effort. And I think one of the bits we're most pleased with is the section where it describes some of the candidate features that you might be. It's kind of like a, you know, you might have two or three of these, of these qualities and you'd be qualified. And if you read it, basically anybody who's engaged in the Django community should be qualified and should at least have written down that you are qualified. Whereas previously it was very
much like you must have five years of serious contribution a
Will (09:16)
Yeah.
Carlton (09:16)
year which makes it sound as if only the old group Grey Beards can be involved and that's not what we want so anyway depth 19
Will (09:22)
Spe speaking of which, I think
vodcast viewers are not gonna appreciate you had quite a beard going this spring and summer.
Carlton (09:30)
Yeah,
it was a little while and then it got really hot over the summer and I was like, it's got to go. So maybe I'll get it back as the winter comes in.
Will (09:35)
I even checked I even checked in with
you and you said it wasn't you weren't getting was it hot beard beard hot face or you had some phrase for it.
Carlton (09:41)
No, it was fine.
then, then like, you know, so in Catalonia, we had the hottest August ever recorded and hottest day in September ever recorded and things like that. It's been a hot summer. And I was at the point where I said, no, it's got to go for a while. So maybe I put it back.
So maybe I put it back. No, it's a
Will (09:58)
This is what passes for a hobby for a hobby at our days, at our age, you know?
Carlton (10:02)
nice hobby. It's good fun. I've got the brush, got the oil, that's all fine. So I can get that back.
Will (10:05)
No, d this is the
this is the thing, is that it's a lot of work. It's way less work to be clean shaven ish. That's that's the you know, you see someone with the hair and it's like, the maintenance. I can't anyways. I do wanna say so Jango and
Carlton (10:16)
Yeah.
Will (10:19)
the med, you had some sponsors. Should we sh shout them out?
Carlton (10:22)
Yes, no. So fantastic as well. we had JetBrains
Will (10:25)
Mm.
Carlton (10:25)
who sponsored social events. had Cuttlesoft who sponsored the coffee. We had the DSF who sponsored the event. So they were financial sponsors and their sponsorship was really appreciated. It really did help the event and that was wonderful. And then we had EuroPython, the PSF and Python Italia who came on board as community sponsors as well. Community sponsors or community partners, perhaps, shall we say. We did try and get a
visa applications for people from outside who didn't have visas, that turns out to be very difficult. Python and Italia, they bent over backwards to try and help us there. But I think for a small organization like Django, or for a small event like Django and the Med, it's really hard to see how that's feasible with the amount of work it takes. So maybe the DSF can step forward and find a way of doing that in the future. I don't know. That's something that the board can discuss. But it really isn't simple because
It's not the case that an individual can just sponsor somebody to come. It's a lot more to it than I certainly had seen before.
Will (11:32)
Well, I think
yeah, I think conference organizers would know about that, but yes. and then also Python
Carlton (11:36)
Yes, I think every year
they have the same problems with Jank on Europe, the same difficulties. It's really non-trivial.
Will (11:43)
Well, and then the
US, again, don't wind me up on it, but yeah.
Carlton (11:47)
Yeah.
Will (11:49)
but I did wanna say so Python Pescara, the local group, I think also helped out.
Carlton (11:53)
Yes,
the folks from Python Pescara, came, I think they were helping power organizers as well, but
Will (11:59)
Yeah, yeah.
Carlton (11:59)
I think they, so thank you to those there, but they also came at some of the social events and the meals and it was really nice to meet them and they kind of would act as our guides, know, yeah, go here, see this, do this, which was wonderful.
Will (12:11)
I
I saw the photos, yeah. I was I was like Carlton give me photos and I know Paolo's put together I think at least one video so we'll try to we'll link to that when he gets a chance to put it up.
Carlton (12:21)
So Paolo has a family friend who came and did photos, know Missing Bartek, so we had Alicia and then
Will (12:27)
Yeah.
Carlton (12:29)
she was doing videos and she's putting those together. We've got a Django med Instagram account now of all things, so do follow that if you're on IG people. This is so far beyond like
Will (12:36)
Yep. You told you told me, yeah.
Carlton (12:40)
you know what we do normally so Paolo really has pushed the limit far out so we're never gonna be able to compete with this in the future.
Will (12:49)
I'm good. And then I think i is it announced next year? Is that formal? Can we? Or Okay, we can talk about it.
Carlton (12:53)
Yes, well it's 90-95 % full. The plan is to have it in,
yeah, the plan is for it to be held in Malta. Joe Zamit, who lives there, he's going to be on the ground there and put it together so it'll be in Malta probably in the second week of October, which is just about right for this time of year.
Will (13:09)
So it's from Django on the med
to Django in the Med, and then I saw
Carlton (13:13)
Well, melter's
not underwater, right? So we'd still be on it
Will (13:16)
What?
Carlton (13:17)
in some sense.
Will (13:19)
But it's in the Mediterranean. Appreci appreciate the joke, Carlton. Come on. And then there's talk of Django off the Med, you in Cambridge and other places, so we'll see how it grows
Carlton (13:21)
yes, you're right, it is, it is. Yeah,
Will (13:29)
from there, but
Carlton (13:31)
I hear Frank's going to organise one in Kansas, so yeah.
Will (13:33)
Well and in Cambridge, UK potentially too. Yeah, I would I've never
been to Kansas. I would only go to Kansas for that.
Carlton (13:42)
So, right,
okay. So let me put it this way. When we started Django in the mid, the idea was to have these sprint events. And then when there's only one event, there's a great pressure to try and make it accessible to everybody from all around the world. But the idea with the local event is you can't bring people from all around the world. So it's much better that we spin off other events elsewhere. And then some people can travel short. So we had Lillian, we had Simon Chourette, we had Jacob Wolves, they all came a long way.
Will (14:08)
Mm-hmm. Jacob, yep.
Carlton (14:13)
the vast majority were much more local to Europe, Austria, Italy, Spain, these kind of striking distance type locations. And that's, think, a much more sustainable, it's gonna be a much more sustainable model, but that requires that we have people take the baton and run one in Britain or run one in America or run one.
Will (14:31)
Right.
Carlton (14:32)
We had various people like, we could do one in the Alps, we could do, so there was, yes, Innsbruck, yeah.
Will (14:36)
Well, so DjangoCon Europe, February twenty twenty seven, Inns Innsbruck, Austria,
speaking of the Alps.
Carlton (14:43)
I'm loving their social media. They're like, why Innsbruck? Well, because DjangoCon Europe needs a backdrop and the pictures of Innsbruck with mountains right behind it. looks very nice.
Will (14:50)
Yeah. Yeah.
No, it's exciting. well let's okay, so let's go ahead.
Carlton (14:55)
So we
I just wanted to talk quickly about the work that was done
because the like
Will (15:00)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you about. Yeah.
Carlton (15:01)
okay Yeah, because it you know the marketing for Django no matter so it's a holler, but it's three serious days We've got 25 people together and we work solidly For the mornings and then the afternoons are for more social and you do carry on the discussions in the afternoons and you know on the bus coming back from the restaurant says you know, so people talking about nested transactions and all sorts of things going on but the
core time that we get stuff done, it is phenomenal. It's not just me that says that. There's a couple of posts already published. And the key point that keeps getting made is that these...
advances, they wouldn't be possible without the time spent in person. It really is a different environment than online. So Matthias, who's surname is totally escape me, fine CMS person, Matthias and then Joe, who's coding Joe, they're both working on the front end. They've both been working on import maps. They've both been working on asset handling, but coming from different approaches. And then they get together.
and they sit around a table and within an hour they've realized that actually their approaches could be compatible and if they just did it this way then they could come up with something which satisfies both their needs. Now that, but that conversation has been going for literally years on the forum. If you go on the forum and you
Will (16:18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carlton (16:19)
look up about the forum media and related tickets around there, it's like two, three years of chipping away and bubbling and whatnot versus an hour in the room together. It's...
Will (16:29)
Right. Well, and it's also
it's also if they know they're gonna be in person, right, you can sort of do your prep, right? It's another I mean, 'cause part of the issue, you know, sprints are in some ways the best part of Django Con conferences, but you're already four or five days in, right? So you're already a little
Carlton (16:44)
Yes, yes.
Will (16:45)
fatigued and not everyone can, you know, extend. So to have so I assume that's, you know, in person, but also like you're kinda like, Okay, I'm gonna see Carlton, like let's let's hash this out and then
Carlton (16:56)
Yeah.
Will (16:57)
to your point, it's usually in yeah, in person
you can get way more done. I mean that was, you know, we we we've lamented it. I mean
Carlton (17:02)
Yeah.
Will (17:03)
we we did this podcast in part because without the Django cons for, you know, during COVID, not that it falls apart, but it's a lot harder. As digital as we all
Carlton (17:12)
Yeah.
Will (17:13)
are, like you do need that in person.
Carlton (17:15)
Yeah, no, it's...
Yeah, so anyway, it's amazing. It's all I can say for my own work. was working the big thing I
Will (17:21)
Yeah.
Carlton (17:22)
wanted to make progress on was async transaction. So being able to await a transaction atomic and then use the async methods of the of the ORM within that. And I was able on the first day I was able to sit down with Jacob Walls, a fellow with Simon Charette, who's the big ORM contributor with Lily, steering council member, who's a big ORM contributor. And then Charlie Denton and Sam from the Kraken high performance team.
who are working on the subatomic package and nested atomic. And we were able to have probably half an hour, 40 minutes where I explained the problems and the issues. And we went through the foot guns and just brainstorming back and forth. And by the end of that, I was able to get a comp that morning. I was able to put a really nice comment on the issue, which then Caleb Hattinger, who was another Sprinter 10D picked up. And then on the second day when I was busy reviewing a
another async PR which has been on my back list for six months. He was able to make progress on the basis of the comment and then on the third day we were able to work together and I think within a few weeks we will have something. So I'm very excited that we will get this into January 6.2 now. that first of all that big session with half a dozen
Will (18:36)
Yeah.
Carlton (18:37)
people working together where we were able to reach an understanding which otherwise wouldn't be there. Then him to be able to pick up that on the basis of it. that work just.
literally isn't reprobable in just an open source environment, an online environment. So that's phenomenal. And then, you know, I can talk for days and days about the other things that are going on. I don't want to minimize that.
Will (18:57)
Well so the the package,
right, you the the what BGT?
Carlton (19:02)
yeah,
so Mark Smith and I did bootstrapped a package based on, so Hinnock put together a package called BGT for background threads, I guess it stands for. I think we should pronounce it Django Beergut, because it's BGT. But we put together a Django version of that, so that enables you to run supervised background threads with exponential back-off and retries and all these things you want. Plus it's got a leadership
mechanism where if you run it in multiple processes you can set for one of them to take a lock via a lease table that the ORM provides and then that will only be run once. So you might say want the report the Monday morning report to the CEO it's really important that only goes out once you don't want like 10 of those arriving on the CEO's desk at once so
Will (19:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carlton (19:51)
you'd have a leader for that and that that can only happen the one time. But that's a very exciting
additional tool in the toolbox, the exponential back off, the leadership, that kind of, those kind of features are very hard to write and we're leveraging HENIX expertise there. But that can work then with any database that the ORM supports, SQLite or...
MySQL or PostgreSQL or whatever. So very excited about that. There's a channels wake up. So wake up, you normally by default it wakes up on an interval. So, you it's like a cron job, you know, you have it every hour say clear out your sessions, but also there's a channels wake up where you can subscribe to a channels group and then it will wake up on an event to the channels group. That's in the code base, but it's not documented or tested yet because we didn't quite get to it, but that will be there shortly. And it's
Yeah, it's going to be a very useful tool in the tool belt. So very excited about that. Justin Meyer and Zain Anandale, they worked on a Django benchmarking project where we're to be able to load test different configurations,
Will (20:53)
Mm, yeah, I saw.
Carlton (20:55)
which is something that's been on my backlog forever and ever and ever. But they were actually able to dedicate at the time. so, you know, we always have always Django fast enough. Well, it's fast enough for my blog running 10 requests an hour sort of thing. Yeah, no problem. What about if we put it under load? What about we're running ASGY under load?
if we're running with free threaded Python, how does that change the thing? So to be able to construct these different scenarios, run them with Locust to show their actual performance profile, I think that's going to do a lot more to enable us to have a more sophisticated discussion about performance. look how many requests per second it does in this hypothetical benchmark.
Will (21:35)
Right, it's also abstract
or can be abstract. yeah. Well that and also meant
Carlton (21:42)
Yeah, and so, yeah, go on.
Will (21:44)
some sorry, I was just I'm just reading your notes here 'cause I want to make sure we highlight everything. was Simon also mentoring Annabelle on something?
Carlton (21:51)
Yes, so Annabelle was a surname again. don't know. I only met her at the event and I didn't internalize her surname, but she was a Janganaut alumni. She went through Janganaut space and she's interested in the ORM and I was sat across from the table while Simone and Annabelle were working together and Simone was, they were, it was just amazing to watch. It was the best kind of mentoring, the sort of thing where we've got a, essentially a new contributor. She's not a new contributor. She's, you know, been through the Janganaut
not so spohan but she's still an entry level contributor. She put her hand up at the beginning when I said who considered themselves new. okay, she's a new contributor and Simone was able to sit with her and they were able to go through things and she's left the event as an established ORM contributor. Now
Will (22:38)
Yeah.
Carlton (22:40)
that is just gold dust. That's again, literally not replicable in another kind of environment.
Will (22:47)
Yeah. Yep.
Yep.
Carlton (22:50)
And I've got Jacob Walls, I've got him committed to auditing our free threading readiness in preparation for 6.2. Who else? can't remember, Juliana was working on Django tasks.
Will (22:59)
Mm. Then yep.
Carlton (23:02)
Lillian was helping work on the benchmarking project for a bit, but she was also then working on other stuff. don't know what exactly, because she was the other side of the room. There was people working to update the unit testing. Anyway, I'm listing the work that gone on, but it's prolific. There are half a dozen PRs on Django,
haven't been closed. have been some that have been closed. There's two or three depths being written. There's progress on long-standing tickets.
Will (23:25)
Yeah, in three days, right? So it's
Carlton (23:27)
It's literally amazing. So anyway, that's like a 10-minute monologue about Django on the Med, but I
Will (23:32)
Ha ha ha.
Carlton (23:33)
cannot express enough how effective these sprint events are for pushing forward the project. So thank you to the sponsors once again, Chet Brainskamp, Shof, and Django Software.
Will (23:42)
So yes. Well it
helps that Mark Smith is the head of Python ecosystem at PyCharm JetBrains, so
Carlton (23:52)
Well, he's aware. I mean, think the difficulty that we have as a community is making the marketing case to a company that it's valuable to either sponsor the
Will (24:00)
Yeah.
Carlton (24:00)
event or to send their teams. And so one other thing that we're doing that's based off advice from Daniele Prothida is to keep a record of the event of when what started, what's finished, when's it completed. And so for the next for the marketing for the next one, we want to say, look, we've done two now and here are the concrete things that were achieved. And so there's a real case that you should be sending your team
you should be sponsoring the event.
Will (24:25)
Do you think I mean there's a limit on the size that you know, separate from space constraints, right? 'Cause you if it's two fifty, that's different than twenty five.
Carlton (24:34)
Yes, so I think about 2025 is about the right number for the dynamic of the event, which is why we need to have more than just Django on the Med, because if we only ever have Django on the Med, then there's too much demand for that event to be the place. I think if we
Will (24:46)
Mm-hmm. Jango on the prairie.
Carlton (24:49)
grew...
Well, Django on the prairie, Django on the camp, Django in the Alps, Django anywhere. Also,
Will (24:54)
Yeah.
Carlton (24:55)
Django in countries in Africa, Django in Asia. Why can't we have these sprint events elsewhere rather than just, let's do it in Western Europe? It's really important that we try and help grow this globally. We're a global community. We can't be insisting that you have to come all the way to, as nice as coming to the Mediterranean is, we can't be insisting that you come all this way to join in. That's not inclusive in the right way.
Will (25:17)
Yeah, yeah. No, exactly. I mean and I
have to say we we just you know, here in New England, USA, we had a nor'easter, so I had nothing but rain and cold and wind. And then you were showing me it Pescara. So I felt ever more you got a mug. w I s
Carlton (25:31)
Yeah, yeah, it was lovely. I even got the mug. Yeah, yeah, I love Pescara.
Will (25:39)
okay. I survived or no is it I love.
Carlton (25:42)
No, it
says I love Abruzzo, Pescara. So Abruzzo is like the region.
Will (25:47)
Okay.
All right. Thank you. Okay, can I switch gears or is there anything else on
Carlton (25:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah,
yeah, that was a massive monologue about Jang on the Med, but it was phenomenal.
Will (25:56)
Yeah, yeah, well I I didn't
hear it. I w I was trying to follow it online. I think and I think d you know, Danielle's right, you do do need to document it a little bit so people can see, okay, well they clearly had a good time, but what actually came out of it? and so one one canonical place to quickly see just the things you mentioned helps helps companies justify it, helps peop you know, I don't think people need to justify it, but companies to see, the you know
Carlton (26:20)
It makes a difference between whether people can come. To have Sam and Charlie from Kraken there. Kraken are one of the most serious users of Django at scale. And
Will (26:29)
And sponsors, yep.
Carlton (26:31)
to have them there, working on the key bits of the ORM that causes them difficulty in their business. It's really important for them, it's important for us. It's just win-win-win.
If they were sent by Kraken, but if they had to come on their time, would be less, well, can I take the holiday and the personal expense to do it? Even if the company's not sponsoring the event itself, if they can fund the team going because it's an investment in the framework they built their business upon, well then,
that's a worthwhile result.
Will (27:00)
Yep. Totally.
so this is not gonna be an hour long episode. I think the main thing was Django and the Med. There are some projects, I guess I'll just highlight so this is the twenty ninth. tomorrow the thirtieth, air, which is the new AI agents in the IDE comes out, for jet brains for PyCharm. So that's
That's been really interesting. been playing with it for months. so not really a third party package, but something that's taken up a lot of my time and I'll have more to say in an interesting non-promotional way, but it's you know, forced me to I think like a lot of developers, I'd been sort of separate panes. So I have my terminal, I have my git client. I've been using fork more and more, Carlton, slowly morphing into you
Carlton (27:45)
Yeah, I like folk, I'm a fan of that.
Will (27:48)
IDE of choice. but having it in one interface is the goal and it's just to quite
question
of how customizable is it? What does that workflow look like? Can you spin multiple agents going on at the same time because of the weighting? So all of all of which is to say like that's been really interesting for me because I've been a little bit, I don't know about behind, but like I'm busy trying like get stuff done. I can't endlessly fiddle with the next framework. Or not the next framework, but you know the next tooling because the tooling changes so fast.
Carlton (28:12)
Yeah. Yeah.
Will (28:15)
So that's been fun.
Carlton (28:18)
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm a long-standard advocate of adding up
Will (28:21)
Ha ha.
Carlton (28:21)
all the time you didn't spend fiddling with tooling in order to get stuff done. And over the long run, you know, I I missed that tool entirely, but I saved, you know, numerous hours in not playing with it. I think it's
Will (28:31)
Yeah.
Carlton (28:32)
interesting to see JetBrains take care of that. Clearly amongst
the most experienced in the industry about what developer tooling is and could look like and, you know, that knowledge.
Will (28:41)
We're the only ones.
at scale still believing in the IDE of any kind.
Carlton (28:47)
Right, so.
Will (28:48)
you know, Windsurf the anyway, so it's you know, even if people aren't writing as much, you're still hopefully reading it. so yeah, it's been interesting more to more to say on that. I was gonna one thing that's we also are gonna be launching an AI off mode, which finally, so Zed has had this, but we've you know, many people just turn it all off and we
weren't able to have that. We will have that in the new release that comes out in like a month. because we heard from enough, you know, educators in particular who say, you know, we use PyCharm in the schools and they get the free trial of AI. And once the kids get a taste of just tabbing, they're not gonna type, right? And that also extends to sometimes for
Carlton (29:29)
Yeah, man.
Will (29:30)
my own work, sometimes I'm like, I just I don't want the AI, you know. So you'll be able to toggle that on and off. And so it's a technically simple thing, but it's
Important that JetBrains is just trying to be open to like whatever the developer professional developer wants. And that's certainly one of the things we've heard, right? Sometimes I just wanna focus on the code. so
Carlton (29:49)
Yeah.
Will (29:49)
I'm kind of ex I'm e low-key excited for that one.
Carlton (29:53)
I think that like just go back to the async kind of cases, the problems that come up in async are so complicated that you literally have to spend the time thinking them through. And if you if you can't remove yourself from, you know, some from from the candy machine, so to speak, that's just going to give you answers,
Will (30:13)
Yeah.
Carlton (30:13)
regardless of whether they're right or wrong. You can't you can't get the mental space to think them through. So it's kind of essential that you are able to step away from that and work quietly and then
you know, come back and then we'll discuss the mechanics of editing. You know, it's a separate thing, but the human understanding still requires time and effort and a quiet
Will (30:34)
Yeah.
Carlton (30:34)
space in which to do it. So I think that's quite a nice feature or idea.
Will (30:38)
Yeah, and that's there's a whole series actually. This professor is called AI by hand, where he now teaches he's a you know, CS professor and he teaches AI by hand specifically to kind of slow it down to the point where your brain can can take it in because you know, AI like I you know, for my book update, I used AI to review stuff. If you use it in the right way, it's unbelievable, right? Like I can have it look at every change I've made, all my past versions, the Django docs, you know, and it'll spot like, you used
A you know single quote here, double quotes there, or something changed. You know, for that kind of stuff, for for search, basically, it's phenomenal. The problem is, you know, you sort of like lean back and then you lean back and then you've kind of fallen over because it it sort of lulls you into like you're like, that's but it's it's not thinking, right? Like I still constantly am
Carlton (31:27)
Yeah.
Will (31:27)
trying. I'm like, just one shot, like a new chapter on you know, tasks in my voice, you know, give it everything it can have in my voice, and it's still.
Thankfully, it's nothing I would pass as my own, right? So again, that's that's the sort of
Carlton (31:40)
Yeah.
Will (31:42)
nuance in the debate is like of it's phenomenal for a lot of things. But if you yeah, anyways, that's a separate discussion though. I think for many programmers though, it's it's it's hard because it is so good. You know, not everything we're doing requires deep thought. But if you don't think about it, like, you know, my point is if you can't do it manually, you shouldn't be letting AI do it for you. but how do you find the space?
To learn anything manually, you know, you have to put in some of the reps and some of the space mentally to to think about it. anyways, I'll stop there. But
Carlton (32:12)
Yeah, okay. I mean, I'm sure you'll bring it up every week for the rest of the season. You don't need to get it all out in one.
So your project is out, it's a work. My project, just
Will (32:21)
I am gonna
Carlton (32:24)
say, come and look at some of the ones that come out in Django. So do go and check out Django BGT, Justin Maher's Django Benchmark project. think, okay, there's a couple there that, Concrete, yeah. And then,
Will (32:33)
Okay, we'll put links we'll put links in the in the show notes.
Carlton (32:37)
you know, check out the Django Deps repo if you're more into that, because there's a couple of new draft BRs that have been opened up there to have a read of those and input and give your support or input or comments.
Will (32:49)
Okay. books, the most important part of the show. You must have read
Carlton (32:52)
Yeah,
Will (32:53)
something. What have you read?
Carlton (32:54)
yeah well I've been reading a bit of haiku actually, bashoo with the narrow road to the to deep north and it's a collection of haiku, an old translation it's penguin classics but yeah I like it a lot. This grassy hermitage hardly any more than five feet square I would gladly quit but for the rain.
Will (33:17)
There's just no topping you, Carlton. well that sounds like fun. Maybe not my cup of tea, but I can see how it's like a palette cleanser from code and everything else to just sort of enjoy the wording. Yes. I have been reading The Wall by Marlin Hossefer, Austrian author. like f
So th so she so there's a woman who goes to the countryside and then a this mysterious wall comes up and she's isolated from everyone. And so through that is a way to examine society and herself and it sounds like it could be very boring. In fact, it's really, really, really interesting. they've made film versions of it. It's I think it's quite famous in its own little genre, but I've really am liking it. and it's definitely a female
It I would har I not to I don't wanna be sexist, but it feels like this would be difficult for a man to write. There's a lot of things that the the author who's a female talks about that seem more female than male in terms of responsibilities and caretaking and all these things and so she finds a a cow and a cat and yeah.
I'm not doing it justice. I enjoy it. It's kind of what I wish
Carlton (34:34)
Yeah, okay.
Will (34:36)
things like, you know, like the Hunger Games and all these sort of like YA apocalyptic
Carlton (34:39)
Yeah.
Will (34:40)
books. Like they're fine, you know, but there's such better stuff. but it's it's very philosophical.
Carlton (34:48)
But...
Will (34:49)
I think you would like it, Carlton, right? It's sort of like this wall shows up.
Carlton (34:51)
Is there better stuff that's targeted for YA though? Like, because all my
kids have eaten the Hunger Games books and they, you know, they burn through them and
Will (34:58)
No, I think well the
Carlton (35:00)
they really get a lot from them. But it takes, if
Will (35:02)
No, no. My kids to
Carlton (35:03)
I have to give them something more sophisticated, quote unquote, they couldn't read it. They're not ready.
Will (35:09)
Yeah, I think that's it. I think you you're you're blinded by plot when you're younger and then when you get to our age, like there's only so many plots. Like you kind of seen them all. So it's more the like, what do you have to say about anything? To me, or you know, combined with like
Carlton (35:23)
You get 300 pages and you're like, this is
just another hero's journey and throw it away.
Will (35:28)
Yeah, well the yeah.
No that's that's the two plots, right? Here comes the town or someone goes on a journey. That's every story ever. anyway, so I'm enjoying it. it's also nice to read. It's a really good translation. I mean I can't read German, but it translates very well, very smoothly into English, so
Carlton (35:47)
Okay, so it might be terrible translation but it's a good read either way. Yeah.
Will (35:51)
Yeah, I recommend it. And it's short. It's two
hundred and forty pages. So you can you can feel like you accomplished something. It's not these, you know, thousand page bookstops.
In any event,
Carlton (36:01)
Yeah. Okay.
Will (36:03)
anything else to mention? So we we are gonna start up the season, so we'll try to get back to our usual cadence. We'll have some great guests. You won't have to listen to just us blabber on. We have guests with things to say.
Carlton (36:17)
That's probably it, let's let's call it a day.
Will (36:17)
Anything else? Okay.
All right. Well everyone, thank you. If you made it to the end, thank you for hanging with us. Do check out the links and we'll have guests coming soon. So we'll see you all next time.
Carlton (36:28)
see you next time.
Will (36:29)
Bye-bye.