Notices by Mariatta 🤦🏻‍♀️ :python: (mariatta@fosstodon.org)

If your project don't have deadlines, don't need maintenance, (just imagine never upgrading your Python/Django version), sure go rely on volunteers.

But if the open source project is critical to you, pay the maintainers.

That was asked in a private discussion, but let me share my opinion publicly for free so at least y'all can learn and benefit from it.

Real cost of relying on volunteers to do open source:

- can't stick on schedule. It's whenever they have free time. maybe never.

- can't pick and choose the level of expertise and experience of the volunteer. you might just get newbies/AI who introduce more bugs/tech debt for you to fix

- no continued maintenance. they made one PR and then leave.

Was asked "why are you asking for money to develop something that's gonna be open source anyway"

Um...

Folks don't understand how open source contributions work. If you want a feature, you don't come and say "make me this feature". Instead, you open a PR and ask for it to get merged.

Folks don't understand how community conferences work. If you want something to happen in the conference, you don't come and say "make this happen for me". Instead, you say "I want to volunteer and do this for your conference".

#opensource #community #conference

I'm reading this Python open source library docs (Sphinx/Readthedocs theme) and I tried so hard find the link to their GitHub repo, the source code of the project itself and for whatever reason, the doc is not linking back to the GitHub repo and I don't understand why is it like this 😥

The doc has the link to the current page's source code (raw rst file), but I almost never need this. I want to see the project's codebase.

I have a heater for my fish tank with its own built-in temperature display.
But because I want to know whether the temp displayed is accurate, I bought a a second standalone thermometer. If the two numbers match, then I know the temp is correct.

Well, now both are showing two quite different numbers. I couldn't tell which one is malfunctioning, and so now I have to get a third thermometer 😥

#AquariumDiary

Friends, I'm #OpenToWork and I'd appreciate any leads, or networking opportunities you may have.

My current client work is winding down so I can take on additional clients.

Don't miss this rare opportunity to work with the one and only Mariatta.

🎯 Lead Software Engineer roles
✅ 20+ years of professional experience in tech
✅ award winning open source contributor
✅ Expertise in #Python, #Django, APIs, automations

#GetFediHired

@glyph Yes the clicker!! Somehow I expected that should be a "given", something conference organizers would provide (and Display adapter), so I don't need to bring my own, but there were a few times when I've had to use my own clicker 😓 The clicker is now part of my traveling kit.

@glyph @kimvanwyk I was thinking it's the MacBook with USB C?

One more non-obvious thing for conference speakers:
- use personal email address (instead of work email) when you submit your talk to the CFP system.

Just in case your employment status change between the time you applied to speak and the time you're scheduled to speak. This assumes you still want to speak regardless of your employment affiliation.

Sometimes it's not actually easy for the organizers to change your email address on their end 😰

#PublicSpeaking

Adding to my list of non-obvious thing you can do as a conference speaker:

- Offer to be a backup speaker in case of other speaker's cancellation (and don't feel bad if you're not needed)

#PublicSpeaking

(I need to convert this whole thread into a blog post)

Obvious things conference speakers should do:
- submit a talk proposal
- take a photo/selfie
- write up bio
- give the talk

Not obvious things conference speakers should do:
- update email filter so emails from conference organizers don't end up in spam
- when traveling, plan to arrive at Talk day - 2 days, in case of flight cancellations
- show up at least 30 minutes before the talk slot, not 5 minutes before
- use light mode presentation slides (light bg, dark text)

anything else?

Yesterday my son attended a local hackathon event for teens.
I chatted with another parent, asked if she's also in tech.

She said, yes she is in tech. She also said that she tried so hard to discourage her daughter from tech, because from her own experience as a woman and mother, she hit a ceiling, and got left behind when she took parental leave, and she wanted better for her daughter.

This hurts so much, hearing this in the year 2024 😢

#WomenInTech

Less obvious perk of contributing to open source:

When you're coding on the plane without wifi, then realized you needed to read some Python/Django docs.

No problem! Because contributed before, you have local clone of the repo, so you can build the docs on your laptop.

So start contributing to open source.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Years ago, in my early days of contributing to Python, I'd seen messages on mailing list that made me feel uncomfortable but I didn't feel brave enough to call it out. I brought it up privately to my mentor, and using his position in the team, he called it out and people apologized.

That's one of the things that stood out for me about mentorship. It's not just about teacher/student kind of thing. It's also moral support, using one's privilege for others who don't have it. (1/)

Grateful for the things the Python community members do? On this blog post, I laid out the many ways you can express your gratitude.

https://mariatta.ca/posts/how-to-thank-python-people/

#Python #Community

How to check if a string is ASCII in Python?

Use: `str.isascii()` and this is available since Python 3.7.

If you ask this question on search engine or stack overflow, you might end up at older answers that tells you to do stuff like:

all(ord(c) < 128 for c in s)

Don't do that 😓

#Python #Learning

Me as a newbie:
- Give me the code, I'll read it to understand what this program is doing.

Me as senior dev:
- I don't wanna read code in order to find out what your program is doing. Give me the docs and show me the tests.

After 30+ years, I just discovered a new secret in the retro SNES game Lufia.

It turns out that if you use cheat code and level up till some unbelievable level, the final boss will actually flee from you 🤣

I'm guessing that the game developers added in the code to flee for the weaker enemies, but I just didn't think that they would add it for the final boss fight 😂

I was already looking forward to beat the final boss easily, but this was too easy 😝

#Lufia #SNES
Screen recording:

The Cuckoo clock being auctioned at PyLadies Auction tonight
#PyConUS #pyladies