In this RedMonk conversation, Deb Nicholson, Executive Director of the Python Software Foundation, discusses the PSF’s responsibilities, recent challenges with a government grant proposal, and the community’s strong support with Kate Holterhoff. The conversation highlights the importance of cybersecurity in open source, the role of PyPI, and the evolving landscape of programming languages. Deb emphasizes the PSF’s mission to support the global Python community and the significance of educational initiatives in teaching Python effectively.

Links

• LinkedIn: Deb Nicholson
• Deb Nicholson, “The PSF has withdrawn a $1.5 million proposal to US government grant program,” Python Software Foundation blog, 27 October 2025.
• Nick Monkfort, “Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities,” MIT, 2016.
• GitHub Octoverse 2025
• PyCon US 2026 CFP is open now!
• Python Software Foundation Sponsorship
• Donate to the PSF
• Find a Python meetup
• PyLadies meetup
• Getting started with Python

Transcript

Kate Holterhoff (00:12)
Hello and welcome to this RedMonk Conversation. My name is Kate Holterhoff, Senior Analyst at RedMonk. And with me today, have Deb Nicholson, Executive Director of the Python Software Foundation. Deb has deep roots in software advocacy and is a founder of the Seattle GNU Linux Conference. She’s also alumni of the Open Source Initiative and the Software Freedom Conservancy. So Deb, thanks so much for joining me on the MonkCast.

Deb Nicholson (00:37)
Thanks for having me. I’m glad we ran into each other at GitHub Universe last week.

Kate Holterhoff (00:43)
I tell you what, I know it was so serendipitous because on the RedMonk Slack channel, we had been talking about some recent news at the PSF. And so the moment that we made this connection, I was like, I got to get her on the MonkCast to tell me all of the things. So let’s get to it. So the PSF, it’s been in the news. Maybe I think for our listeners who aren’t as familiar,

Deb Nicholson (00:59)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Kate Holterhoff (01:10)
We should like set the groundwork a little bit first. That’ll be the teaser. But before we dive in, will you first tell us what the PSF is responsible for and what you do there?

Deb Nicholson (01:21)
Yeah. So the Python Software Foundation maintains all the infrastructure for the programming language, as well as the package index, which has zillions of packages on it from the internet and some great, some the other thing. And so we do all of that. We also take care of all the legal things that go along with having a massive global programming language, like trademarks and stuff like that. And we work really hard to support the global community of Python users.

Kate Holterhoff (01:50)
Yeah, so like basically nothing. You guys like just hanging out, just chilling.

Deb Nicholson (01:53)
Yeah, I’m totally like just two hours a week and then I sleep the rest. that would be the dream. we also run a massive conference that happens in May in the US, so.

Kate Holterhoff (01:59)
Alright, live it the dream. such good things about that conference. That’s amazing. Okay. All right.

Deb Nicholson (02:07)
Mm-hmm. CFP’s open

if you wanna, you know. Separately, you and I

Kate Holterhoff (02:13)
Yeah? Throw in your hat?

I am a Python fangirl for sure. Yeah, that was the first programming language that I tried out. I bought a book. I wish I could remember what it was called now, but yeah, it was, it’s big in the digital humanities, which is how I sort of got into this whole scene. So, okay.

Deb Nicholson (02:29)
Yeah, Python

is very much like a Swiss army knife. I feel like some of other languages, it’s a little bit more like you’ll probably end up here or here. And it’s like, OK. Whereas Python, it’s like, you could end up anywhere, like digital humanities, like curing cancer, like writing weird scripts for your smart home, or creating the robots that are going to control the future. Who knows? It could take you anywhere. Space. There’s Python in space.

Kate Holterhoff (02:59)
There’s Python in space. Yeah, no, can attest to less the space, but definitely to the fact that academics love it. It’s big in the circles that I was running in before joining the RedMonk crew. All right, so let’s talk about this proposal. So it was January, 2025, the PSF submitted a proposal to the US government National Science Foundation.

under the Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open Source Ecosystems program to address structural vulnerabilities in Python and PyPI. I want to hear what happened next.

Deb Nicholson (03:34)
Right, so we worked on it really hard. This is our first time ever doing a government grant. They are very specific, bureaucratically speaking.

So we submitted that and then we kind of like, all right, let’s find out. And then in the interim, we did see like some people had like particularly software Carpentries had had a question about like, hey, there seems to be a little phrase in the contract that you sign once you’re awarded about DEI was the way they use it. So diversity, equity and inclusion. And they ended up turning down their grant. So we were like, well, you know, maybe we’ll have some experts take a

look at this or maybe some massive larger entity like I don’t know Harvard or whatever might take it to court and overturn that phrase in the NSF grant language like in the interim none of that happened we asked some really specific questions when we spoke with the NSF we’re like could we get a waiver could we just not sign this part like could you write put something in writing that says like you know that you mean the thing that people get mad about on the internet which is like where you will

hire like non-white, non-men people and it’s like no no that’s it’s we follow the law and we hire whoever is best for the position but they wouldn’t clarify they wouldn’t do a waiver they wouldn’t let us not sign it no other massive entity took it to court and won an amazing victory to get that kind of like weird side language out of the agreement and so the PSF in addition to like all the other things I mentioned

we host the international network of Pi Ladies chapters, which I think most people would say is a diversity initiative. So there’s just really no way for us to sign something saying we’re not doing DEI and continue to do the work that we do. So it’s in our mission statement. It’s

kind of in everything we do. And then on top of that, it said, if we catch you doing the DEI, we will take the money back. And I’m like, so we don’t have an office. We don’t have like, you know, like a lot of fun, weird nerd furniture or whatever. Like we just pay salaries. We’re all remote. So any money that gets taken back is money that we’ve probably already paid out to people’s paychecks. So we can’t sign anything like that, regardless of what the clause is.

in this particular case, we’re not willing to say we’re not going to do any DEI while we’ve received this grant, which just to bring it all the way back, is for cybersecurity. It wasn’t for a diversity initiative. It’s not for an internship. It’s not for grants. It’s not for some kind of Python women’s studies proposal. It was cybersecurity, which I think benefits everyone.

Kate Holterhoff (06:32)
Yeah, with legal stuff, when they just don’t explain what all it’s going to encompass. I mean, it puts you in a terrible position. And I think that’s the crux of it, right? That they were asking you to sign something that you couldn’t say one way the other would be defensible. And therefore, you just had to opt out entirely.

Deb Nicholson (06:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Well, and it was like, we would never sign something saying we’re not doing DEI. If they asked us to sign something saying we comply with the law and the Equal Opportunity Act and don’t do prejudicial hiring, like, I could sign that, but it didn’t say that. It was like a sentence written, you know, felt like someone wrote it between like one thing and another thing and took like maybe four minutes on it. So it’s, and then it was like, or you give the money back. And I was like, okay, like, which is unfair.

Kate Holterhoff (07:16)
god.

Deb Nicholson (07:22)
I think from what I’ve been told from other people that have taken NSF grants like a pretty common thing would be maybe like like we’re not gonna renew for the second round because the work you did on the first year didn’t quite like meet what we thought it was gonna meet so we’re gonna decline to fund for the second year and that’s like okay that’s money you didn’t already get and you knew there was a possibility that that could happen but to say like no like we could come back and there was no time limit on it like you

know, two years later, five years later, 20 years later, who knows? Like, we’ll just come back and take the money if we ever find out that you were doing DEI during the time that you received the grant. okay. Yeah.

Kate Holterhoff (08:05)
I can’t imagine that anyone could take that grant. I mean, that’s, it’s like a bomb, you know, it could go off anytime.

Deb Nicholson (08:10)
Well, I think that there are, so, you know, the PSF’s been around for long time. We have a lot of different activities. I think there are probably newer organizations that are a little bit like more tightly focused on one thing, don’t do a lot of community outreach work, and don’t have such a long tail and long history. And so, you know, it’s possible that there are entities out there that could take that. You know, it’s, but like for us with the long history and the intent. to continue supporting women using Python, we definitely couldn’t sign it.

Kate Holterhoff (08:47)
And since this has happened, so when was it that you published the blog post?

Deb Nicholson (08:52)
It was last week. I think last Thursday. So almost a week ago.

Kate Holterhoff (08:56)
gosh, about a week ago. And since then, the internet blew up. I’ve seen all kinds of folks rallying around the PSF. Talk to me about what you’ve seen since making your own announcement.

Deb Nicholson (09:02)
Yeah. It’s been pretty amazing, actually. I had a feeling that a lot of our community would be like, high five, man, that was the right thing to do. What I didn’t completely expect was that people would organize, self-organize matching donations. So a number of community regulars, like Cliff and Amethyst, were like, yeah, we’re gonna support, we’re gonna match anybody’s contributions.

We got a lot of larger gifts. We put a funny like 256 gift in there, like on our page, like because it’s math nerd stuff. And a couple of people were like, I’m gonna do it. I wouldn’t have before, but like this brought me over the edge. As of this morning, we have $156,000

raised since this announcement came out. Now that’s a tenth of the million and a half dollars that we were trying to get from the NSF, but it’s amazing. It’s 156K we didn’t have, and it’s from people that want us to keep doing our work the way we do it.

Kate Holterhoff (10:13)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. It demonstrates that the community is there and that you are doing what I believe a foundation should be doing, which is speaking for that particular group of developers, those users, those practitioners, right? You’re doing what they’re asking you to do. You’re advocating, right?

Deb Nicholson (10:15)
Yeah. Yeah, and Python, like I said, it’s a Swiss Army Knife. It’s for everyone. Like, I can’t…

say that it’s only for certain kinds of people and we really try to make Python the easiest language to learn and the easiest community to get into. And that’s like foundational to our mission, like the reason that we do Python. Like it’s not the fastest, it’s not the newest, it doesn’t have the most funding, we already talked about that. you know, but it is a fantastic place to get started programming, it is a fantastic place to

to to code, if code isn’t your main thing, you’re like, I’m actually trying to send telescopes to space, but I guess I gotta learn a programming language, and we’re like, we got you. So for us, it being for everyone is core to our mission.

Kate Holterhoff (11:28)
And talk to me about why cybersecurity is so important today. Like, what is going on with programming languages that make this so important to fund?

Deb Nicholson (11:37)
Mm-hmm.

So there’s kind of two things. One, I would say the entire open source community made that a next week problem for a really long time, until Log4j. And then it was like, OK, I guess this is the week. It’s like, whatever. But that happened. And then also, there’s been the Cyber Resilience Act, which passed European legislation that requires a little bit more out of people

who provide software to consumers. So we have a little bit of a special situation there as an open source steward, but we know that our users are looking more than ever for things like SBOM, us cleaning out deprecated stuff from PyPI, keeping a close eye on malware. And then also, our mission is to give Python to everyone. It’s sort of like, if I went and dropped off dirty sweaters full of holes for a clothing drive, that’s kind of garbage.

Right? Like if we’re giving a gift to the community, it should be a good gift and it shouldn’t be full of malware and weird deprecated stuff. It should be like top-notch, like cared for, like current and secure.

Kate Holterhoff (12:52)
Makes sense to me, 100%. And talk to me about PyPI. What exactly does that do for the community?

Deb Nicholson (12:59)
So PyPI is the package index, and that has a ton of packages on it that the community has provided to extend the way that you use Python. It’s one of the reasons that Python is so popular for math, for data, for AI, is because there are a ton of libraries that have been added to the community pool for people to use Python in those specific instances. And so that really extends the use of Python as a language.

a couple of key areas and probably some weird niche ones that I don’t even know about, like, because there’s so many packages there. But it is, that is what makes Python kind of like feel more purpose-built for stuff that we didn’t like specifically build it for.

Kate Holterhoff (13:47)
Got it. And so the equivalent in another language would be NPM, correct?

Deb Nicholson (13:51)
Yeah, or crates, or yeah, there’s a number of different languages that have that language and then pile of packages. And we do talk to each other actually a little bit because stuff comes up. We’re like, are you getting a bunch of these? And they’re like, ugh, yes, we’re getting a bunch of those. What did you do? So we do talk to each other, especially rust because they also have a big package index. Interesting. Yeah.

Kate Holterhoff (14:17)
Interesting. Okay.

Well, I am the most familiar with NPM. And of course, NPM has been in the news a lot lately because of these attacks. This is exactly what we’re hearing about. I’ve also heard a little bit about some of these new attack vectors that AI is creating where you are vibe coding something, it might include a malicious package. So it’s an evolving space. It’s something that’s extremely important. And my understanding is it’s very expensive to run one of these.

Deb Nicholson (14:20)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kate Holterhoff (14:46)
Yeah, so PyPI, I mean, this is no small feat that you’re trying to take on all of these malicious actors while supporting the community so that Python can do what it does best, which is be the Swiss Army knife that you’re talking about.

Deb Nicholson (14:59)
Yeah, and we do have someone who works on PyPI security, Mike Fiedler. I don’t know if you got to meet him while you were at GitHub Universe, but that’s his whole day is looking at PyPI and working on it. But he’s one person. He’s a really amazing person, but people have to sleep and eat and stuff, limited. And so could we use a second Mike? Totally.

Kate Holterhoff (15:07)
don’t think so.

Deb Nicholson (15:25)
And it is always evolving, like new stuff. I mean, this is the case with security, like even before AI got in there, but like, you know, it does seem maybe a little bit faster where people are able to spin up new fun challenges for us.

But yeah, we get that. We also get kind of slop patches sometimes, which we have to look at. And so yeah, AI has totally changed that space in some ways. yeah, think usually I think malicious actors used to know they were malicious actors. And we have had a few recent where they were like, what? And it’s like, you don’t know.

Yeah, so that’s kind of a new thing where we’ve had a couple people that we contacted, we like, we’re going to take down your malicious packages. And they’re like, my what now? And you thought this? because you vibe coded it. OK. And not to say, yeah, vibe code, but maybe understand a little bit about what you’re doing. if you’re like, I don’t know what those three big chunks in the middle do, but they seem to work.

Kate Holterhoff (16:23)
Uh oh

Deb Nicholson (16:41)
Okay, again, maybe that’s not a sweater you want to gift.

Kate Holterhoff (16:44)
And how do you host this then? I mean, it’s, it’s, there’s gotta be just, I mean, I mean, what, happened to thousands and thousands of packages, right?

Deb Nicholson (16:47)
the bandwidth is massive.

Yeah, like a half a million. it’s, yeah. And it is a huge amount of bandwidth. We wrote about this recently. Some of the entities that hit PyPI just kind of check every time they turn on. So that’s a lot. I think we would not be able to host PyPI without the help that we get from Fastly for bandwidth.

Kate Holterhoff (16:55)
a million. Okay.

Mmm.

Deb Nicholson (17:17)
and they made a five-year commitment. so, you know, so like never go out of business Fastly. Yeah. And they do that not just for us, but for a few other like, you know, similar entities in the community that are very committed to open source. And so, yeah, the bandwidth, like people send like questions, like we’re in the midst of trying to like give.

Kate Holterhoff (17:23)
Yeah, shout out to Fastly.

Deb Nicholson (17:43)
Entities like a way to control the way they use PyPI, which is called PyPI org. So if your company has lots of workers that use PyPI all day long and you would like to kind of like consolidate or maybe like control a little bit more about their experience or regularize it, we are working on that platform so that people can kind of pay us for a little bit more of like a workspace to coordinate activities for corporate usage.

And that’s still evolving. We’re not entirely sure what all people want. But we went from like, I guess your workers will just download anything to like, OK, maybe now you could put some guardrails in there. But yeah, it’s massive. And the Python user is just exponential. So the bandwidth and the downloads just increases year on year.

Kate Holterhoff (18:38)
Yeah, that makes sense. okay, I have two main questions I wanna ask you. I’m debating like which one to go first. So let’s just, let’s do this one first. Okay, programming languages and communities. The role of foundations feels like it’s in flux and I’m based in Atlanta. So we got KubeCon coming up, the CNCF. The OpenJS Foundation was out in force at GitHub Universe too, speaking of that. And so,

Deb Nicholson (18:55)
Mm.

Kate Holterhoff (19:07)
You know, I talk with a lot of folks about this and I feel like there’s a lot of philosophies around it. So I would be interested in yours. What would you say is the role of the foundation for, you know, supporting these communities? What do you, how do you think about it when you wake up in the morning?

Deb Nicholson (19:23)
Yeah, so our role is like, we’re here to support the community is what I’m saying. so, like, you know, the community has been there for a long time. They continue to be there. you know, we work with the steering council. So, like, the PSF doesn’t actually make technical decisions about what goes into Python, what doesn’t go into Python.

Kate Holterhoff (19:31)
Okay.

Deb Nicholson (19:48)
I found out like someone asked me when I first started this role three years ago, and they’re like can you bring back Python 2? And I’m like oh even if I could I wouldn’t but it’s actually not my job to do that like that is you know or can are you I are you guys ever gonna do anything about like the speed of Python and I’m like if it

If the community feels strongly about focusing on that and adding more of that to core, then they will. But I’m not the person to lobby for that. Once the community is like, yes, that’s what we want to do, then it’s like, okay, let me see how I can help you. So, we work to support the Steering Council and the core developers. They meet twice a year, once at PyCon US, and once usually somewhere else to sprint together.

Kate Holterhoff (20:20)
Mm-hmm.

Deb Nicholson (20:38)
for like a week. And Arm just sponsored the one that happened this past month. So it was, it’s like we work with them to make sure they have time to meet, that they have resources, that they have funding. So the other thing that we do with the Steering Council is we worked with a couple of different sponsors to get three CPython developers and residents funded so that there are people who work on CPython full time. And so they work for the foundation.

as contractors, but they answer to the steering council and kind of more broadly to the community. And so that’s like kind of like how the relationship is. I think in other places you would call it a TAC or a technical advisory committee, but it’s community elected so it’s a little bit different over here. Yeah.

Kate Holterhoff (21:15)
Okay.

Okay, interesting.

do you know, as a former educator, I’m always interested in certification programs. Do you also do some education? I mean, I can see how conference is kind of, you know, obliquely related. yeah.

Deb Nicholson (21:38)
Yeah,

so we don’t specifically, we support a lot of educational events. like, there are lots of people that want to, like they learn Python and they’re like, I want to teach more people. And so like teach-ins, Django Girls workshops, like, you know, just any kind of like thing where people are kind of peer teaching. So we support a pretty vast network of peer teachers.

Sometimes like formally with a grant thing and sometimes less formally by like kind of introducing them to each other and things like that. And we do have an education work group that’s looking at that peer teaching experience and what resources might like and they’re a little bit new so they don’t have too much like on the website yet but they’re looking at what resources could be useful to peer teachers. There are people that do teach Python. We actually have lots of people who have written books in the community. So when you said earlier like I read a book and I’m like that

could be any of like eight. Yeah, know like we like we we tried to do something where we invited them all to come to the PyCon US booth once and it was like no it was a wait we’re hitting this problem where what if we didn’t invite one or two and they feel like a little because we have so like so many authors in the community.

Kate Holterhoff (22:32)
Could be anyone.

my God.

Deb Nicholson (22:52)
But yeah, so we don’t officially do educational resources. What we do is support the global network of peer teachers, either with help for their event or help finding each other.

Kate Holterhoff (23:06)
Okay. And I know it’s really big in the classroom too. At universities, do you send folks into actual university settings?

Deb Nicholson (23:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

No, so the academic thing is kind of its own, it works on its own pace, it works on its own thing. We have talked with a Apereo a little bit which is a foundation that specifically focuses on getting open source into universities and helping them kind of like use open source correctly and to like the, you know, its full potential. And so we have talked with them about like kind of more formalizing a relationship with Python educators in like college and university settings. But that hasn’t quite, that was also another grant that I think we probably won’t get because we were going to apply for something together or so from the US government.

So I think we’re like on their no list for a little while. Yeah but it is it is something we’re aware of but like Python is like you don’t have to ask the PSF permission to like teach Python or talk about Python or write a book about Python like you know like you don’t need our permission like just do it and and that’s the case like with the educators it’s a number of years ago I read a study saying that like

Kate Holterhoff (24:06)
geez.

Deb Nicholson (24:32)
Python is the best programming language for computer science education retention. And I assume educators have read the same study. you know, so they’ve converted. Like, I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and like a number of years ago, like MIT used Fortran for their computer science 101, because they’ve been doing computer science for a long time. And they switched right to Python. And then Harvard was like, I don’t what they were using before, but they were doing Java for many

many years and then switched to Python maybe like six years ago, seven years ago and so now they use Python for their 101. And so like but like none of them talk to me I just kind of like hear whatever like computer science gossip in town like they don’t have to ask our permission or get in touch or anything and just like buy a book from somebody and start teaching Python. And that’s like the beauty of open source is that there’s like no

Kate Holterhoff (25:04)
was gonna say, yeah.

Deb Nicholson (25:32)
So we try to make it like no gatekeeping, right?

Kate Holterhoff (25:35)
and that is the vibe that I get from it as well. to add to that list there, I would say, so I’m still an affiliated researcher at Georgia Tech, and I know that their students begin with MATLAB, but many then transition to using Python. But yes, Java, I believe it was like a decade ago, by many studies was the,

Deb Nicholson (25:38)
Good, good. The vibes are right.

huh.

Kate Holterhoff (26:00)
the most common language to be taught in university settings and Python overtook it though. And so yeah, that makes sense seven years ago.

Deb Nicholson (26:05)
Yeah, and Java was, I started with Java and, And it makes a lot of sense because they were selling it as like, they were really trying to let you know there’s gonna be a lot of jobs for you when you graduate. And when you went and looked at Dice or whatever it was, it was all Java jobs. so I completely get it. Java’s very well suited for that sort of modular, big enterprise sort of thing where the encapsulation keeps you from messing up other people’s code, which if you have lot of employees is…

probably very important. And probably many people learned the hard way. We’re like, we need a language that keeps people out of each other’s stuff. So I’m not knocking on any of the other languages. It’s just like for undergrads who are maybe taking other classes, like having something that’s a little bit easier to learn just turns out to be the best for retention. And that language is Python.

Kate Holterhoff (27:02)
well, I know many Python devotees and because we do keep mentioning our being a GitHub Universe, I do want to mention the Octaverse report. So they, you know, announced that the language rankings that they run showed that, you know, TypeScript has overtaken JavaScript. But last year, Python overtook

I believe it was TypeScript at that point. So anyways, Python was at the top. And as a former web dev, I was like, this is a fun bone to pick with me because I feel like separating JavaScript and TypeScript to begin with is kind of sus, especially if you’re going to then take it and extrapolate that that AI has overtaken the web. I don’t know about all that. You know, we could have a fight about that particular sort of conclusion from that study. But

Deb Nicholson (27:40)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kate Holterhoff (27:55)
I do think it’s noteworthy that Python is at the top of the list. Can you speak to that at all? How is Python doing it? Is it just AI? that the answer?

Deb Nicholson (28:05)
I mean, it’s not not AI. I think it’s definitely that. But it’s also like, it’s the data science, like, you know, like the scientific Python usage. It’s just, I think Python has probably the most users that don’t consider themselves programmers, right? They’re like, I’m like studying this weird thing in rats. Like, and it’s like, but you use Python. It’s like, sure, all day, every day.

But I’m a rat researcher. OK. And so we have the most people that don’t consider themselves programmers as daily current users. So the use case is just a little bit different. And then, of course, because of the data science and all the math libraries, that really did lay the groundwork for AI. I don’t think anyone knew how the, like,

know, increase in usage around AI was going to go, but we’re kind of like already sitting there with all the math libraries. So, like, we didn’t, like, go out and be like, hey, can I talk to you about AI? Like, you know, no one actually probably needs anyone else to talk to them about AI. They’ve probably been talked about it. But,

You know, but we were just like, all the math, like we’ve just been sitting here with that. Like, did you guys, we have math. It’s in the back if you want. So, you know, so that just worked out to be like kind of a, like a happy coincidence because like, I think, you know, there are other programming languages that are, you know, purpose built for other specific things. And we, we just kind of like really landed in that math niche and.

And that’s like AI is just kind of really opinionated math. So there we are.

Kate Holterhoff (29:45)
It’s the rise of math. So web developers, take that. It’s the rise of math.

Deb Nicholson (29:49)
Sorry, I love the web. Please keep making web. want math. Could put math in the back and please still have web on the front.

Kate Holterhoff (29:52)
Yeah.

Yeah,

like I said, I deny the whole premise that the web is being dethroned by any metric.

Deb Nicholson (30:08)
Yeah, no, no, I know no one who’s been on the internet for more than like a month would say that like the trend is towards back end and not front end like I would say users more and more demand like a nice front end that is not confusing and is not like Weird or shifty like every time you move your cursor or like resize your window or whatever like

the kind of things that we put up with the early days of some of the software tools that we had like maybe 20 years ago, people would be like, nope, I’m not even downloading that, looking at that screenshot. Like, did you say Harry Courier font and like windows that resize badly? No, like, so I don’t think the front end’s going anywhere.

Kate Holterhoff (30:57)
Yes, well, this is certainly the drum that I bang on all the time. So thank you. Yeah. I know. And you know, I poke fun at the Octoverse report because RedMonk has its own language ranking that also separates TypeScript and JavaScript fine. I feel like I’m permitted to do so. it’s, you know, it’s fine.

Deb Nicholson (31:02)
That’s just a guest drum for me, so. Yeah, I have heard that and it’s like, yeah, don’t, we’re not in charge of these things either, but like, you know, maybe you’ll get to have the person who is on the show someday.

Kate Holterhoff (31:32)
Well, Rachel typically writes the post for RedMonk and if she ever know, tried to claim that the web is, going away based on that data, I would have some strong words. I’d be in the comment section. she knows what I think.

Deb Nicholson (31:48)
Maybe you’ll get someone in the comments for this that has opinions about TypeScript and JavaScript as like she’ll never be lumped together.

Kate Holterhoff (31:55)
Totally different. Well, that’s good. I’m ready. I’m ready. Let’s do it. Anytime. I am, you know, I just, a challenge. Okay, amazing. I’d say let’s go ahead and like begin to wrap this up here. So I absolutely want to know what folks should do if they want to participate in what the PSF is doing and try to help

Deb Nicholson (31:59)
Who knows? I know. You sound ready. I’m excited for you.

how can you help us make up a million and a half dollar gap? You know, so that we can do more cybersecurity work so that we can do more grants work so that we can do more of what we do as usage increases. You can give us your personal money. We will definitely take that. We love that. Even better is if you are hanging out with your boss or you’re the boss, your company

should sponsor Python. you use Python all day every day, then you should be participating as a sponsor, as like someone who gives your employees time to come and be part of Python Core and be part of the conversations and pay attention to like what’s going on in Python. If you’re just here for the community and you’re trying to learn Python, I would say find a Python meetup near you.

Even though Python is easy to learn, is easier with friends, and you can make new friends at your local Python meetup group, or PyLadies, or PyData, whatever you choose, whatever your town has. And those people are all really nice and really passionate about learning Python together. If you want to come and join us in California, we will be in Long Beach in May for PyCon US, and the CFP is open now. I have found over many years,

many different jobs that if you get a talk into the conference, your boss is almost guaranteed to want to send you. So get a talk in and then come hang out with us in Long Beach in May.

Kate Holterhoff (33:48)
this has been such a great talk. Okay. again, my name is Kate Holterhoff, Senior Analyst at RedMonk. If you enjoyed this conversation, please like, subscribe, and review the MonkCast on your podcast platform of choice. If you’re watching us on RedMonk’s YouTube channel, please like, subscribe, and engage with us in the comments.

Deb Nicholson (34:02)
Thank you so much.