Transcript: Django Fellow - Jacob Walls

I'm Will Vincent with Carlton Gibson.

Hey Carlton.

Hello.

Welcome, Jacob.

Hey Will.

Hey Carlton.

Really cool to be here.

We're very excited.

Are we the first people to get you since you've been fellow?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've got the inaugural fellow interview.

And thank you for being our first video guest, too.

This is our first time having a guest on video.

Yeah, yeah.

A vodcast?

Is that what you said?

I was like, Django Chat has graduated to vodcast now.

Wow, levels.

Okay.

All right.

That's next week.

I think we should say that this episode is sponsored by Hacksoft.

You're Django Glama

More on their services later in the show.

Okay, thank you.

Yes.

Um breakfast is lined up.

We've got stickers, t-shirts being printed up, we've got everything.

And Jacob, you're gonna make it, I think.

I'll be there, yeah.

Oh, yes.

Oh wow.

Wow.

Jealous.

So Paolo and me sat there doing it doing whatever.

And so we've um I think we've got, yeah, in I think 15, maybe you know, a few more will sneak out the um sneak, sneak out the woodworkers the next time.

But that's a nice number.

You know, I'm right, you know, absolutely, absolutely.

Um very excited.

Um, yeah, it's you know, for the

You have to have a picture

so everyone feels like having a picture.

Um so it's gonna be it's gonna be very good.

But on the first day, we're gonna do the roadmap, the um road mapping workshop that we talked about.

We've got a Django part um Django birthday party for the for the second day, and then on the third day, like to do a kind of um um roundup, you know, what have we achieved, where we're going, what we're taking back to the community, um, so everyone's clear, and you know, hopefully thinking about um pushing Django on the med few in the future versions, you know.

Um Paolo and I have done this kind of um by ourselves this time as a proof of concept.

Looks like the proof of concept's gonna work, and it's okay.

How do we handle it?

You have some people.

We've had um uh uh button down of sponsor the new just with the newsletter, but the the you know, the the mailing list is you know the important communication channel, and then um in collaboration as well with the Junta Mente Palafugelle provided the venue, um, which I'm very grateful for.

So um that's just yeah,

it's super.

All right.

So Sir Sarah Boyce is is gonna be on maternity leave, so then we're gonna be down to one or half a fellow, because Natalia's three days a week.

Um Carlton, you're on the fellowship committee, yes?

Yeah.

And then we'll get I'm curious if Jacob can share his perspective, right?

So so you find out, oh, we need to, Carlton, get a new fellow.

How does that like there's a blog post, and then you filter a hundred submissions, or tell us?

Yeah, okay.

Um and so we knew some time in advance, and then there was a certain amount of, well, we've got um we've got to put out the uh an application, uh a call for um applications, and we need to do that within a certain time scale.

You know, you know Django within a certain time scale is not Django's forte, right?

Django is Django is as long as it takes, but we keep going forever.

That's just

And you know, Jake tell us all about that momentarily.

But we you know, to have to do something in a in you know quite a short period of time really is difficult.

And then we put out the um request and we had over a hundred applicate applications, and they were many, many of them were just really, really, really super.

And so um that was that was quite encouraging, you know, you when you when you get that number, but it was it was a lot to go through.

Um I was handling

the first content.

What's stood out about it?

But um I was handling the first content, and my my hack was to read the applications as they came in.

So that you know, rather than need to.

Touch it once, yeah.

Well just to make it awkward for you, Jacob.

So he's all very he's already very involved um in the core framework, and he's um

on the team, right?

Like, don't tell him I said so, but he's very bright.

And um you know he he was one of the um one of the um bunch that we identified in the first round, and then we narrowed it down and you know yeah, and in in the end we we he was the candidate we made the offer to.

It's you

I mean, so Jacob, we can get get your point of view.

What what what was it like, right?

So you sent out you sent off the application, but then there's quite a bit of waiting too on your end.

I for me it didn't feel particularly long, like I didn't have a lot of feedback to give, like in that respect, that that needed to be changed next time.

Um maybe that's just because of uh having been uh having to adjust to the academic world where job searches take a year.

So six weeks is like pretty good.

Yeah, yeah.

Um and then, you know, there's a volunteer board and you know, the small team, people maybe in and out on leave and make sure that everybody is comfortable.

Like I'm assuming those were all major factors there.

And so it's you know, I think if we um or we will I think the the I don't think it's a secret.

I think the the hope is to be able to put out and you know, call for an another, you know, other um people in this role in the year in next year or so um to help grow grow it and maybe for short-term contracts rather than permanent positions or whatever, but the hope is to continue resourcing this.

I think next time we do it, we might need to think about you know making that first review phase, having some paid time allocated to it because um, you know, it's difficult.

It's it's difficult to come to a consensus between four four or five people when those people are all on volunteer and they've got work.

You know, if it if it's only 10 applicants, it's a much easier thing, but when there's a hundred, that's all hang on.

Um anyway.

I do we want to talk about Django 6.0, but uh quickly.

go back.

You just did academia, Jacob.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So um, yeah, I trained, so I I did uh music and philosophy in undergrad um and then went down the music composition path, uh music composition and technology, and that's kind of how I caught the programming bug.

Like you meet almost any composer of concert music and they're all dabbling in electronics.

It's kind of just an expected part of your bag of tricks.

Um not Python right at the beginning, but you know, um that came later.

Um also between degrees, um, I moved to Madison, Wisconsin briefly, and I was working in a uh QA job at a healthcare tech firm.

So it's actually something that I think shapes kind of I I didn't know I would go into software eventually.

It was just a throwaway job for a year, but like coming back to software later, I kind of realized like, oh, my first time getting my hands in the clay really with software, being in QA kind of did shape how I think about um yeah, that that much experience with testing really did shape how I think about software.

Um, did a PhD in music composition and again was dabbling in technology along the way.

Um, and then had a had a course in in Python and programming techniques during that PhD, and that set me up to right after my fellowship ended and I needed something lined up.

Um, there was a she music retailer um that reached out to me.

They were looking for somebody who had music theory experience, Python experience, and or software testing experience, actually, primarily, and was local to the Philadelphia area.

And I was like, hey, I'm that unicorn.

Like, I'm all I had to do was put those keywords in LinkedIn, probably, and get one result.

Um so

They were doing this interesting project in um creating a better sheet music search engine that wouldn't just search keywords from publisher blurbs because every publisher wants to tell you that their band medley is the best Christmas medley that's ever been written.

Um that's not useful information.

Um so we were scrambling PDFs, trying to extract musical information, trying to extract queryable ranges of instrument profiles that band directors could save and perform.

And then COVID hit, and that wasn't a moneymaker, and I got redirected to all kinds of other stuff.

So anyway, I had a really interesting couple of years as kind of a Python generalist slash project manager slash uh sort of finger in every pie kind of thing.

And it was around that time uh where the senior developer I was working with had left um to go start at Meta, and I realized like I need to learn more, right?

I'm still pretty junior, I don't have a senior developer looking over my shoulder all the time.

And that's honestly when I got involved in Django because I I thought, you know, I want to learn more about the web.

And there's this community where you can get involved, you can volunteer some time working on pull requests and tickets, and you'll get feedback.

Um and so that was that was that was kind of how I got involved in Django.

And then it just so happened that my next roles after that all involved Django, and so I stayed involved and tried to bring my knowledge of what was going on in Django to those roles and say, hey, we could install this package or extend what we're doing with the ORM.

Look how expressive the ORM is these days.

Yada yada yada.

Um Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

Yeah, and so that's what's cool about being a fellow now is that um like I get to pay some of that forward, hopefully, with luck.

Yeah.

Two weeks, two weeks, something like that?

Yeah, like five, five weeks, something like that.

I was at DjangoCon US in Chicago, early September.

Um, I, you know, I'm in the lucky position to be able to kind of start in a start in a role where I've been doing many of the tasks before.

Obviously, I mean I hadn't been on the security team before, I haven't been rolling releases before, but like I'd seen kind of the the guts of how Jenko pull requests and tickets go.

Um so that part was relatively smooth.

Uh I should also shout out to Sarah and Natalia and the many people at the DSF who worked very hard to make sure that I had a smooth onboarding.

Um that was great.

Um but yes, it's uh I mean it's a welcoming community and and there's uh it's

a lot of trust that's bestowed on you kind of right when you start, right?

Yeah, I mean but you've already earned that trust, right?

You you that's the whole point of the hiring project.

Anyway, Will, you were gonna ask about something.

Okay.

So Okay, fine.

So 6.0?

I sort of excited to talk.

Yeah.

I mean, so Natalia's gonna be the release manager on this, so you get to watch one, and then I think 6.1, you'll be the release manager for Jacob.

Is that right?

Yep.

Be my turn.

We just take turns.

Um so I don't know, Carlton.

We we sort of

I mean, we have two fellows on here, right?

Like from the outside, these releases just sort of appear, but it's an immense amount of work to go from feature freeze to release.

Like what if what

Like you you you prioritize things correctly so that you have as much time as you need to deal with any last-minute surprises, and then inevitably there's a surprise on the last morning where it's like, oh, you know, is this feature ready to ship?

Do we need to document this one thing or back out this one piece?

And so yeah, there was just a little bit of last-minute um hustling to just uh back out a small part of the feature that we figured wasn't ready for prime time in the in the case.

And really much tell tell us what happened there.

I mean, it's um I think we you know it's it's a DE, it's a Django enhancement proposal that's been around forever and it's being implemented in phases.

So Django 6.0 is gonna have the basic interface and it's gonna have the backends for development and testing purposes.

So the dummy backend and the immediate backend.

The I think the database backend is coming in a feature version.

Um and I think that was a really smart division of effort.

Um, so we just had the plan to merge what I just said, the interface and development testing pieces into 6.0 for the feature freeze.

Um, and I went through multiple rounds of review from lots of people from the community.

Obviously, it'd been implemented first as a third-party package, and so it had it had already matured, Wagtail had already been using it, others have been using it.

Um Sarah gave it a thorough review, she asked Natalia and myself to give it a thorough review.

Um, you know, and Jake Howard led the implementation, uh, did a fantastic job, super responsive.

Um, and then yeah, just the night before the feature freeze, uh I think it was Simon piped up, said, like, did you remember to check this against multi-database setups?

And it's just like, that's the one thing nobody had on their

checklist that like, you

Just has the integration against every major part of Django been checked, and it's just we missed multi-databases.

Um yeah.

So quickly,

So like at least for me, whenever I started at new companies or I had people join my team, I was always like the first like two weeks, write everything down because you're gonna get tunnel vision really quickly.

But yeah, checklist that's added on by future fellows is a good idea.

Yeah.

Sorry, Carlton.

Jake was like, Do you need help?

Like he was around that morning watching it, you know.

That Tali had already asked me to prepare the PR so she could approve it and merge it.

It's like, but then we had we had backup there because Jake was ready to help too.

So it was great.

Yeah.

I mean, because the the the there's two bits, right?

There's the feature freeze where you say, right, no more's going in, and then there's the alpha, and it's it's kind of up to the release manager to say, but the alpha needs to be a couple of days later.

It's like, look, I've got one PR that I'm gonna merge, but nothing else.

That's okay.

But you know, obviously the expectation and the want is to get it out on that day.

So there's a sort of pressure to to

release it.

Um people should download it, check it out, and run their agile test suites, record issues.

Nothing.

Come on,

focus, get

up there.

Okay, yeah.

What should you

ask about okay?

Carlton, you go, and then I'll Well, I

I mean, we've talked about the headline features a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

Obviously, it's um the having having yeah, better development and testing tools for tasks is I think gonna be a huge win for developing.

Uh being able to turn celery off.

It's gonna be great.

Um yeah, and then just in terms of like deep cuts or minor features, um, I sort of asked around when I started.

I I think my approach as a fellow when I started was to just try to close as many open loops as I was already involved in uh before like taking on new projects.

Uh and one of them was a kind of uh PR that had been sitting in the review queue for for ages, and it'd been a contributor that was sort of uh what I think sometimes people call taking the Vulture approach, where they take a PR that's stalled and then they take up the mantle and try to run it to the finish line.

Uh and this is somebody that I'd iterated with as a reviewer before, and I was kind of building expertise in an area I wasn't totally familiar with.

It was in Postgres full text search.

Um, and it was um creating a new expression called a Lexine that you can use to sort of safely wrap user input uh and compose queries with those pieces of user input and negate them and combine them without having to escape everything by hand, which is you know complicated enough that it might turn you off from trying to even implement those kinds of features.

So um so that was cool to be able to land that kind of out of nowhere right before the feature freeze.

that's a that's a

It feels good for them, feels good for you.

Like, you know.

Yeah.

It's kind of about Django's roadmap and your thoughts on how we go forward.

So it always strikes me that um every release isn't it knocks it out of the park, you know.

You know, go back as far as you want.

4-2, great release.

Fiverr, great release, 5-1, another great release, 5-2, another great release.

We've got another super release coming up this time.

And yet it's all done on volunteer.

It's all done on volunteer basis.

It's just what happens to be ready at the time.

I wonder how you feel about that over the medium term.

And you had

We'll link to as well, I believe.

Did I?

Oh, really?

Okay.

Didn't you?

I might have done.

Yeah, you did.

I I'm pretty sure you posted something and then you asked me to jump in and

you know boost it or something.

One of us

is losing our mind here.

Like, how can you depend on contributions from volunteers and to be able to ensure that something is ready enough to merge?

On the other hand, it's like if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

You know, Django's really lucky that it doesn't have like this, you know, invisible hand of corporate money behind it, like telling it what to do, like that's very good for Django.

This I'm not saying it should change anything at all in that respect.

Um and I think you know, if this success is gonna continue, if we're gonna still having still have great feature release after great feature release, it's gonna depend on people who just believe that you know new features uh and new and important features can still land in Django.

Like it's not that we're closed for closed for new features.

I've seen that on Reddit.

I've seen a post like, oh, you you can contribute to Django, but they just do bug fixes.

Like you've got to understand, you know, no new features really.

Like because it is the major releases and go, well, that look at those and look at those and look at those and look at those.

And but I just for people listening to this podcast, it's like if you hear your coworkers talking that way, like just I think that that's my answer to your question.

It's gonna take people continuing to push back against that idea for the success to keep happening.

I mean, people

Like, I mean, Reddit, I for work I'm on Reddit responding to stuff, but like you're

only usually

It's there's there's some signal there, but it's a lot of noise.

Uh I would say, right, if you go in the hop in the Django forum and you're still finding people pretty riled up about something, that's a good signal because that's a self-regulating community, and that's where more quality happens.

And the idea is to come out with some sort of key things that you know we we can take back to the community and say, these were the ideas that were raised at the at the workshop, but then do a teeny bit more and kind of break them down a little bit so that they're addressable to contributors.

In you know, the example I keep giving is uh modernized contrib auth, right?

That's just too big a you can't do that, but right um, you know, um to break it down and maybe you know um do a survey of the available two-factor auth options in the community so that you know we we know we've got a starting point that well that's really addressable to a potential contributor.

And I think if we can identify those and you know help to identify addressable things, then we can it's not that we haven't got contributors, we've got lots of volunteers, and it's guiding them to things that the community wants to see go forward.

Um, and that's kind of independent, I think, of having a big corporate sponsor who's paying for things to

get done.

Yeah, I'm excited to see you leave those, or you know, I'm excited to see those unfold uh at the at the sprints in Spain and then to see that disseminated in the community.

I mean, part

We haven't had anything where we're saying, look, these are the things we're working towards.

Um I don't know.

Anyway, that's that that was kind of what I wanted to ask you about.

Because that was that was one of the takeaways from DjangoCon US.

Um I mean it's

Jacob, what do you think?

I'm glad that we're not just ignoring it.

Um I think I'm eager to I'm eager to see how much we can do with less, I guess.

Um are there forgotten bits of Django that we can build upon, you know, that leverage parts of I don't know.

Does it doesn't require ingesting a whole new apparatus?

Um and honestly speaking, from my own personal experience, like I can't answer that question.

I'd love to sit down and play.

Um and I don't have time during the week as a fellow to just yeah, sit down and play.

At least not right now, not this week.

Um so I'm excited to see what other people are gonna come up with.

Oh that's great.

Yeah.

It's got like a list view and a crate view, and you know, it's got all the sort of crud views, and it's got a serialization method.

But if you go in, there's there's there's almost no code to it.

And it's it's like, oh that that's kind of quite interesting because it's not it's like um these um I said to her that I liked it because it was like um find CMS versus say Wagtail or Django CMSs.

You've got these these these giant CMS packages, and then you've got something that's much more minimal that you know it just works with the Django admin.

Well, the same here, it's like this is a rest solution that works with very little resource beyond what Django already provides um to talk you know to your point about looking for something more minimal.

Um, so I was excited

about that.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, no.

It's like how

Because the federal role can kind of consume you.

There's so many tickets, so many issues, so many things going on.

It can kind of get a few.

I guess you could you could you could suggest that like, okay, you can't be effective in your role unless you allow yourself enough time for professional development and have a play with something you need to have a play with.

And I would say, sure, that's the feeling I came out of DjangoCon US with, which is that like, oh, I need to spend 45 minutes playing with this and 45 minutes playing with this just to, you know, keep up with the conversation.

And so there's a time and a place for that, and I think it's gonna come.

But also it's like I'm I've started in the new role, and we've got a we've got a backlog we want to start hacking away at.

I just kind of feel like that's the f the first part of my tenure, that's the part I want to focus on.

And um, yeah, maybe down the road there'll be time for yeah, trying to well, Carlton, you're talking about guiding contributors.

If guiding contributors effectively means having a play or just yeah, doing a survey of the tools out there.

I mean, I don't know, maybe conferences are also good places where that happens.

Like speaking with people at DjangoCon US, I didn't realize the the just the force or weight of opinions people have about things like DRF.

Like I'm I knew people had opinions, I didn't know they had opinions about it.

Um that was just interesting feedback to gather, you know, just the yeah, sheer, sheer weight of those emotions.

Um, but yeah.

Yeah, I

Um Well

Yeah.

No, I mean I was feeling a little you know deja vu all over again because seeing Jacob be the new fellow and you know go around the sprints.

I want to ask you about that.

Um, but also I remember I guess Natalia and Sarah when they became fellows seeing seeing you kind of pass off the baton, Carlton, in a sense, and then seeing them, you know, not pass it off, but also try to, you know, bring Jacob in.

Like, or maybe that's not the wrong analogy, but like two versions of the same thing.

Circle of life.

I mean, I hope it was good for you, Jacob, right?

I mean, I think that's the thing that you knew, but now you really know is just how much trust and autonomy is placed in you as a fellow.

I mean, I know Natalia in particular, coming from a corporate environment, you know, still is like, well, who's, you know, who's the manager?

And it's like, well, you know, it, you know, so a lot of these questions have to kind of come within, you know, how do I find time to be playful?

Right.

Like, I mean, I I struggle with this in my own job, right?

The irony

You know, I'm getting better at doing that.

So yeah, I was just interesting to see.

Because a lot of the questions you had, Natalia also had, and it's kind of like, well, you know, uh, I probably even said like off the cuff to you, you know, in a way, as long as people online are relatively happy and the fellows committee is kind of happy, it's really on you to define the role how you want.

Like there's tremendous trust unless you screw up.

Then you just boom.

Yeah.

So I

don't know.

I guess it was interesting for me just seeing you go through that.

And I I hope that you had a chance to meet as many people as possible because I know you'd been to DjangoCon Europe, but um, even at a DjangoCon US, not everyone knows what the how the fellows work.

Um, right, even among those 300 people, it's still kind of

a yeah, slightly experience.

And I I wish I had met more people, and next time I'll rectify that.

Um but uh you know I met as many people as I could.

And um yeah.

this little uh invitation.

So the so the the N plus rule one rule is that um for each di each Django Con you've been to, that's N.

And then each day you have to meet N plus one new people.

Now that's that's okay if it's your first one.

And your first one you've got to meet two people a day.

That's you can do that.

But you know, if you're like Russell Keith McGee and you've been to 20, you'd be a good

idea for calling.

Okay.

They're ready to take your Django project to the next level.

Yes.

Helps us do this.

Absolutely.

Because I think there's a lot put up on the fellows, but you probably already see are there things people can do with tickets or just online engagement?

Like, how can how can people help you and the fellows?

Because I don't think that question is asked much.

Yeah.

So not to be discouraged and take your energy elsewhere, but to like stay engaged, um, you know, look at a discussion and try to determine what would move that discussion forward and then just be that person.

Um, instead of waiting for, I mean, because it's funny you just will, you just said like even the fellows ask questions like who's the manager?

And it's like, there isn't one, you know.

So the same thing goes for contributors.

Like be that, be that man, be that project manager, right?

Help resolve the blockers.

Don't just just don't just wait for somebody else to, you know, whatever, outline the blueprints, like help, help make the blueprint with us.

Yeah.

I mean, because now uh there's a board member, and here we come to the the show, uh Jeff Triplett.

You know, so that that was one of the things people said at DjangoCon.

They're like, you know, the drinking game.

I forget who said it.

Was it you, Jacob?

Or someone said, you know, we have to, I have to mention PyCharm and we have to mention Jeff Triplett as our Django bingo.

But Jeff is the uh, I think the official fellow liaison with the board uh in some capacity, right?

So right?

So he checks in.

Um Andrew got this on a regular basis to just hear how things are going and also to play that role of trying to remove blockers if there are blockers that are slowing us down.

And so it's great to have that support.

So yeah, I I think we well, speaking for myself only, I feel supported.

I believe the other fellows feel totally supported right now.

I mean, and I think just before that, when I was on the board and I would literally text Carlton the day before a meet a monthly meeting, being like, uh, how's it going?

Any any requests, you and Marish, you know, let us know.

Um, you know, so there was some there was some, but it was it was pretty much that, right, Carlton?

And most of the time you're like, yeah, we're good.

It's a little bit more.

And I've been really impressed with the way she's seen the lack of our Florian um Apollon described it as a YOLO approach that we have.

And he's right, it's a kind of and it's just been the way it's always been.

We've always just kind of got on and done it, and it's been fine.

And but Natalia's come in and she's been like, no, that's not fine, because that's not um great for onboarding, it's not great for continuity, it's not great for you know, and she's absolutely right, and she's identified issues one by one and ticked them off as trying to make them better.

So, you know, just constantly impressed by Natalia's professionalism.

Um, but yeah, it used to be you text me and I text you, and we'd be like, Why why did we have that back channel to the board?

Well, because we did the podcast, but it can't, it shouldn't rely.

Right.

Well, you know, but like only employees only or not employees, but only paid work that's on Django, his only route of communication to the board goes because we happen to do the podcast.

Like that's

So part of that started, Carlton, because we would have multiple times

It was like, what do the fellows think?

I don't know, like you know, that's kind of why I got in the habit of of asking you.

There was a steering council, we wasn't doing anything.

And for the entire time, there was no guidance coming through and no communication with the community.

I think, yeah, what we're trying to do on the steering council is kind of get that going.

And if we can establish that in our tenure and hand that off to the next steering council as something that's exists, then there should be much more structure combined with you know, fellows having proper management and proper guidance, and then the steering council that's actually helping to steer the technical direction, and then the board can do its thing without there being these kind of gaps.

But it was back when Marish and I were doing it, it was well, it was Marish and I and the the board organized, the board did the the board bits, but there was no other structure.

Um yeah.

Like because the fellows take quite a bit of time to list, you know, reviewed, triaged, authored, talked about, and some people see those, but I think they put more time into them than maybe people see.

And so one of our actually dinner conversations, I think Jacob, right, with Natalia was, you know, hey, if there's a couple sentences, that can just go in the newsletter as sort of like the the headline, and then we'll list everything.

I didn't give you a lot of people.

That's it, that's okay.

It was it was it was a post, it was um I became addicted to watching the the queue go down after the conference, right?

So it's just hacking away miscellaneously.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're gonna do it.

And I was like, Yes, okay.

If you write a paragraph, I'll put it in there.

So I I try to look.

So I would um, you know, my day would start as a fellow crack opendashboard.jjangoproject.com and look at the numbers and like, oh, there's an arm review ticket, quick, get get on that.

There's uh you know 32 PRs needing to review, right?

Let's see if we can pull that down.

Um it's kind of like uh slight little bit of gamification, it just needs a few animations and some scope.

Yeah.

Is that what you're suggesting?

I want to just mention one thing.

So, what would you magic wand to change anything about

o section which Sarah Boyce initially started and now members of the Django Not space often come in and do where they'll say you know we had X many uh pull requests merged in and do a little description and I know that like I don't I don't live in track like I don't always see like that's my entryway in to see every week oh you know there was 10, 15, whatever number of tickets handled.

And so I'm personally really I I kind of feel like I wish we had more visibility to that point of how dynamic Django is on the inside.

Again it's double digit basically every week are merged in.

And so maybe I should go on Reddit Reddit and find that post and link it, link to them.

But I'm really pleased about that.

I I think we could do more with it but I think it even within Django like there's people you know if you're on the review and triage committee like you're seeing it but then and I think this was Sarah's like sort of insight was like well people aren't even seeing that level let

So I'm really happy about that and I'm open to ideas on how to shine a light I guess more on that around so both you the fellows you all just slamming through so many tickets every week and then also things actually being merged in.

So how do we disabuse people of that notion that nothing's changing because you know stuff is changing.

Anyways magic

Just to shine a spotlight now your your turn Jacob anything

goes uh testers

You know and it's the same thing that goes for the community.

It's like when you're interacting on the repository you want people to be aware of who they're blocking and to try not to be the blocker.

And if you're a third party package the same thing goes.

It's like you shouldn't be the blocker that prevents your users from testing against Django 6 beta or whatever.

And and that maybe somebody needs to let you know that you're the blocker and that person might be you running your project test suite.

So just I mean we talked about this earlier you know Carlton's saying it's going to be the day after the release and you're gonna start getting bugs rolling in about Django 6.

And it's like yeah that's that's what I would setting that yeah setting that awareness setting that intention that you know this is just a normal part of developing a Django project to test against the pre-releases when they're ready.

's not about reputation it's about um being involved and like if if you're if you're turning up during the pre-release with the with a bug report look I've run this on my test suite I've got this regression that that makes you know and it's you know it gets it it it doesn't get you it gets you into the community right it gets you all right that yeah it makes you a contributor in a way that turning up the week afterwards it is not quite the same just

isn't also

0% or whatever.

It's 46.2%

Like it's not even there's probably if I was smarter there's a way I could show it on the screen for video.

We'll do that in the future but it's you know Django is just there and has these testing suites and other people are testing against it sort of um but it's not like there's not tests in Django.

They were using they were so they check out the repo and then they were using the git log um history to find the commits by Mariush to solve

You go no risky come on let's see if we can get this software

Oh okay hold on one second let me let me save image as see we're just learning we're doing it live um boom boom boom um nope not that here

Django's 20 years old because it's so well documented because it's so established it's just sitting there right so it's as mature as any code base is um so all right look at that all right oops now we're in the wrong

So it okay I was just um saying I remembered the issue that you were talking about I opened a discussion about whether we should change Django's versioning number um yeah one idea I just put it as like well we could use a calib because I think the problem people have um and I see it after this the point zero release and the point you know that's what sort of made me think of it again was that um 6.0 will come out and it's in it's no different than 5.3 it's not it's not like a a major version in the in the semantic version in sense of it and

so we it the we go 0.01 point two and that's the LTS and that's the cycle and it it has significance but you have to know quite a lot of Django before that becomes meaningful to you.

And I know Will you talk you've talked about this is why I asked you to comment is that your books people you know they're they've they're 5.2 ready and people are like oh but what about 6.0 it's like but 6.0 is the same as 5.0 in almost all ways

know yeah yeah

ing that and I'll usually do a blog I'll do a tutorial on it and if they just search for it they can find it but yeah it's incredibly stable and um I don't know look look at Python right like I'm not saying Python's perfect with like every year is like what 314, 315 316, but it does present a feeling of stability even as we know there's some Python releases that are a lot bigger than others, you know, like 3.6 with F strings, right?

Like they're not all created equal, I would say from the outside.

Maybe maybe Hugo feels differently,

I mean, I've sort of given up on trying to

There wasn't any, I think, given the discussion, I think probably the state what the status quo are until someone comes up with a better idea.

But yeah,

But one thing, again, it's I think it was 4,500 people, so it's not the whole community, but it's quite a lot of people.

Like 83%, something like that, claimed they were on the latest version of Django.

So not even the LTS, like the latest, latest version.

That feels high to me.

So maybe, you know, I don't know.

The LTS thing is right, is great, but it's a it's a real you will find Jacob, it's a real burden for the fellows to support for three years.

Um if that if you if it's not

already apparent.

Yeah.

So the more we can just sort of direct reporters to the policy, take some of the heat off.

Yeah.

So we're I think we're at the our books and projects stage of the show.

You're not required.

So I'll go first.

Uh project, I want to shout out Django watch files from Adam Johnson.

So this just came out recently.

So run server, it auto-reloads and it goes through the whole file system.

And um watch files is a faster written in Rust way to do it.

And so he implemented this as a third-party package.

So basically just refreshes faster, I think it's fair to say.

And works.

Yes, Carlton, go ahead.

Oh, sorry, I forget, yeah.

So I think it's worth giving a go.

And I think he even mentioned if it picks up momentum, that could just like Django template partials, maybe make its way into core.

Um, it seems like the perfect kind of thing to just incrementally improve

That's cool.

Um it's another one from Google Summer Code this year.

It's another one that we'd like to have in core.

Um, but you know, we don't want to experiment in core.

We want to you know test things out.

So it's um Rafi Khan, who um in good Google Summer Code, did uh Django admin key shortcuts.

Um so the keyboard shortcuts for Django Admin.

And it's a lovely looking package, it's small, it's uh it's lovely to play with.

But we need people to test it and feedback and get some community um engagement with it to make sure that it's stable enough and all the rest of the and and whether the design decisions are right and um all those other questions that just start using it, play with it.

Do do you like it?

Is it are there bugs, are there issues?

Are the keyboard um shortcuts defined correctly?

Are the do they clash with other keyboard shortcuts that you've come across?

Are you able to um define your own custom ones in the way you want to?

These kind of you know, is is it right?

Um, I think it's would be a lovely package to merge in um for accessibility and usability around the admin, which is probably one of the main reasons why people use Django.

And so um I really recommend people trying that out.

We do need the community feedback on that.

I must have met DjangoCon that we'll link to um September 4th.

Jacob, did you have one?

You don't have to, but

Um I was recently on a project that had a lot of SQL objects that needed to be managed, and I we were I we started using Django PG trigger, great.

Uh but we had other things that weren't Postgres triggers.

So I was looking around for something that would act like that, that would be able to calculate forward and reverse migrations from a single source of truth instead of spraying your 150-line forward migration for deploying this, you know, hefty object, and then your 150-line string for the reverse migration, and now your migration file is unreadable.

You have several versions of that.

I was like, there's gotta be something in the community for this.

And there was this old solution in the community that's recently been forked to be tested against recent Django and Python's called Django Migrate SQL.

I think the fork was Django Migrate SQL de.

Um, and you just put in your install apps and it just works.

And now we've got like real clean git diffs on our uh um yeah, on your 159 Postgres functions.

Because you talk about that 159 backwards migration as if it was real, as if you'd actually written it.

Um yeah, I mean yeah.

Oh wow,

Uh it's

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bruno Allo's maintained it now.

Um but yeah, it's yes, I think so.

I was like, no, no, no, we're not we we gotta use Django for this.

And I was just pleased to see that somebody has solved this problem.

I'm gonna check that out.

Wow.

So I'm um I'm gonna recommend software.

Can you see that on the

It's a fantastic book.

I gave this a review in my very first um Stack report, which is my newsletter that I do monthly.

The very first issue was a review of this raving about it because I just got it.

And I picked it up again recently, so yeah, a year or so later, and I'm just like amazed by it again.

There's just so much depth in it, and the more time I spend with it, the more I find.

And I think it's not so much in the book, within like I'm finding more in it, if that makes sense.

It's not even I didn't read it, it's that my my my take on the exercise, the examples have gone.

So um, like the big idea is it talked about complexity and how you manage complexity, and then the appropriate extraction level for the complexity of your app that you're at, which is just really wonderful.

But then the examples of the like how classes work, really, and um things like um row row-oriented versus column-oriented storage, which was one of the kind of really fundamental, like how why do I need to do it this way to get it when I'm doing this kind of activity?

Um, questions.

And you build, you know, you build your examples just Python dicks and and small things, but that gives you a massive insight that you you kind of previously wouldn't have.

And I think it's a wonderful book, and I really do recommend it.

It's also freely available online if you don't want to buy a print book copy, but I'm a print copy of that.

Yeah.

Or are you taking it?

I bought it as a LARC in a used bookstore for a friend who had um uh was was um uh it's funny, it's it we were visiting this curated bookstore, you know, where everything is, you know, just so and the person running the store had said, like, no, we don't have travel writing.

And it's like, you know, I wasn't asking for the Lonely Planet's guide to Italy.

Like I was asking for like memoir or something like that.

I went back and I found this on the shelf and I was like, look, they do have travel writing, here it is.

And so I just got it just kind of as a lark, and then I popped it open this summer and I was couldn't put it down.

Um, it feels like it could have been written yesterday.

Um, you know, America's going to a red scare at the time, and now we're going through a blue scare.

Um, comments about youth, you know, and and what's possible.

Um and so anyway, if you like if you like uh good prose on on travel and on America, recommend.

Okay.

Wow.

Awesome.

Uh mine is a short one.

Hunting game.

Oops, there

we go.

We got on a whole kick talking about books and Japanese literature and mirakami.

And uh yeah, it's mid-century, really well written.

There's something about like really good Japanese novelists.

I don't know why exactly Japanese translates in such an interesting but still good way to English.

I'm sure it has to do with the translator, but it's really it's very, I don't know, very Japanese, very sort of like almost English in a way, Carlton.

Like very like things not said but implied.

Uh it's more about the writing than I think the topic.

So yeah.

Sometimes I mix it up.

Sometimes.

Did we miss anything?

I think we're I think we've covered most of our stuff.

Anything?

Well, Jacob, anything we didn't ask you or you want to say while

I mean, thanks for having me on.

It's been, you know, an exciting first few weeks as a fellow, and now even more exciting being on this podcast.

So thanks for inviting me in.

And we'll just say this episode again was sponsored by Hacksoft, uh, develop your Django development partner Beyond Code.

Learn more about the dis their services in the description.

And thank you for sponsoring.

And thank you, everyone.

Next time we'll be we've got we've got some really good guests coming up.

We won't we won't give it away, Carlton, but we've got some really good guests coming up.

You know who I'm talking about.

Well, I have no idea.

No, I do know.

I do know.

You've just you just jogged my memory.

I wasn't thinking about it at all.

So when you said it, I was like, I don't know who's coming up.

But then yes, I've never thought that we have got some good ones.

Okay.

Thanks everyone.

We'll see you next time.

Bye bye.

See you next time.

Bye bye.