Transcript: Django in 2025

I'm Will Vincent, joined by Carlton Gibson.

Hey Carlton.

We are recording on January 2nd.

It will come out a little bit later.

But yeah, what this is us, there's no guest on this episode.

We're just going to talk about what we did over the break, talk about goals for 2025.

There has been some interesting news for both of us, and talk about Django.

There's a whole bunch of Django news.

And so this is just a back into the swing of things episode.

Just a warm up one.

Get the shoulders

I'll say I'm in a new space, so the sound might be a little bit different.

I'm in a same co-working space, but I'm not in my padded soundproof room that any guests have seen.

This is a private office, in quotes, that is nothing in it, so the sound is a bit echoey, but that will be changed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like as you have.

Um so Carlton, how was your break?

It was awesome.

I finished like Wednesday lunchtime on the week before.

So I I've had like two and a half weeks off, and it was just like, oh, so needed, so needed, so needed.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it just gets the days get short, that the you know, it's a long time from summer, it's like yeah, I know.

A proper break has been amazing.

And I didn't do that thing where I was like, no, I'm gonna work on I'm gonna work on side projects and pretend that I'm resting.

I actually rested.

So I'm in Boston.

So it does get darker.

I mean, here it gets dark at four o'clock, I think, you know, on the December 21st or so.

I don't yeah, it's something like that.

It's not it's not particularly late.

I'd have to look it up, but it's like quarter past eight and before the sun's coming up in the morning, and it's like uh no, no, I don't want that.

Because I, you know, you especially because I get up in the working week at um 6 50 and I open the curtains, and most of the year I have light at that point.

And it's like, ah, lovely, daylight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I can but that those those sort of two, three months over the so the winter or the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, it's like ah, just horrible.

It's horrible.

I I I just need more daylight.

Well, same.

So, well, that's good.

I remember you mentioning to me that you you were, you know, I was like, oh, how are you gonna do?

Because I was still in that mindset of like, oh, so much to do, which I'll mention, but I ended up not really doing much.

Um so I think that was good.

But yeah, breaks are needed, right?

Because it's like you feel on the one hand, it's like there's so much piling up, but then is the world gonna spin?

Probably like you know, it's hard to quantify the benefit of checking out a little bit, but obviously there's a benefit.

It's it's the marathon, not a sprint thing.

It's like, yes, I can work over the Christmas, but at that point, where do I where's my energy reserves for the next cycle?

And by the you know, the last few weeks before the end of Christmas, I was really feeling that no, I need a I need a I need to stop at this point.

Um, and if you don't do that, it's it's not sustainable.

And okay, you can you can always push that one time, but when do you when do you recoup it, right?

That that oh I made the extra effort, but when do you buy it back?

Well, very rarely, and so it's really important to maintain some discipline about the self-care because without it the whole thing falls over, I think.

I've you know I've

If you're you know, if you're in college or something, you know, you can sprint to finals and then you can just you just do nothing for two weeks, you know.

But as an adult, like your day off is a lot less restful than you know what it is when you're 20.

yeah, but 20, 20 is like a glorious time, right?

I mean the the town should be burning as you leave them when you're 20.

That's just that that's the rules.

So there's why you're in Spain.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I don't know.

Um there's this phrase, youth is wasted on the young.

Well, I don't know.

The young seem to do a good job of using it.

So but when I love the way you said when you were an adult, because when you're 20, you're meant to be an adult, but you're not really, right?

It's it's when you get a bit older.

Like, I feel like I'm way more uh rebellious in a way than I was when I was 20, like, which is hard to imagine.

But you know, when I I was I was I was so serious.

I mean, I'm still serious, but like I was very like, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this, and then you know, and then you get in the working world and you're like, oh my god, like I had all these breaks, you know, that's an adjustment.

But there's still this sense of like up and to the right, at least for me and I think a lot of my you know academically minded friends, but that a certain point, like there is no up, you know, once you get into your 30s, like there is no objective up and to the right.

Like it it all becomes trade-offs, yeah.

Hopefully, if you're maturing, you know, it's like personal, professional, like what do you like doing?

Where do you want to be?

You know, I think hopefully it's a little bit less of the you know, answering questions about, you know, what are you up to?

It's like, you know, it's just kind of more like, well, what do I really want to do?

You know, do I do I want to maximize prestige or money or education?

It's like, well, you know, no one, you know, you really internalize, I think, in your in your 40s, like no one cares, which is which is great, you know, because I never did care.

Uh, you know, it's just like they don't care, and then you realize that you don't care as much.

And so hopefully you can be a little more to your true self.

And it just relieves a lot of that anxiety.

And when you're making decisions, you know, and I we probably see this.

We are, you know, you were PhDs, and I, you know, I don't talk about it, but I have like an IV League MBA, and so you're surrounded by these people who are who are very smart and hardworking, but a lot of them don't know what they want to do.

And so the obvious thing is you just chase the the money and the prestige or whatever, and then you you know, but at some point you have to pay the pay the piper.

And maybe not.

Maybe you just like you're bit in a big house with a lot of money and you're happy and you have no soul to begin with.

I think there are some people like that.

But you know, it is some

I hope

It said something like capitalism isn't even working well for these people, they're clearly not happy, right?

And it's kind of true, it seems.

It seems like I hope so.

It's finding yourself, it's that existentialist question about choosing your own path and discovering what it is to be you and to it it takes time to get to that.

That that's that point about still being a child when you're 20, is that no way do you find that when you're 20.

You don't find that it takes years to find.

And if you don't take the time to listen and and all that stuff, you know.

So part of, you know, we're patting ourselves on the back here.

Part of, I think, the appeal of taking a a break of sorts is you come back and it's like, well, like what am I doing?

What do I want to do?

And then, yeah, you need that, like, okay, like, you know, just a reset in a way of like, what do you like, what do you not like?

You know, like I came, I was at my in-laws for a week and a half and came back and you know, cleaned a whole bunch of stuff, just threw out a bunch of stuff that like I knew I needed to, but I just when I'm stuck in the space, it's hard to do that.

And so it's just like a cleansing of them of the mind, hopefully, both professionally and personally in a way.

Um one thing we have to mention, we were talking before.

So we both so you've got me hooked on these lectern notebooks.

We'll put a link, which are fantastic.

And last year we accidentally picked the same color.

Um, this year we have different colors, but you've gone a step further now.

So it's not just the journal, you've gone double.

You've got the the planner, what do you what do what are the words?

So the the the so for years, several years.

It took I've I've tried every notebook, every diary out there, and it's yes, um, I've settled on this B5 page um weekly view.

So you've got a week, the week on one side, and you've got a page of notes on the other.

And I I just live in these, and I've had one of them now four years, five years running now, and I'm just uh so adored.

And I've had bigger ones, I've had smaller ones, and I b5 is the perfect format.

And it's and I but I literally live in in this diet, this planner, this agenda.

I mean, like every page is full to the brink.

I I my work is my working week is in it, and it's a tool.

Um, and then I had a an A4 notebook of theirs, which is very was very high quality, it was just too big.

And I I was like, oh, it's taken me quite a few years to get through it, but they're expensive things, so I couldn't just like be like, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not gonna use it.

I had to use it because it's it's too much to just be that, oh no, no, no, it's not good enough for me.

No, so I I finally finished it.

So I might I treated myself to um a B5 notebook, and it's got little dots on the pages, and it's got numbers, it's got a bit at the front where you can write what you want, and it's oh, I'm just in love with it.

Um so I've got the the notebook and the diary the same size, and they both, it's a good portable size.

You can take it to the coffee shop and you get it out, it's big enough to write in, but it's not so big that you can't put it on the table and have a cup of coffee and etc.

So and anyway, I'm just literally in love with my notebooks at the moment.

And yeah, you know, when when you've taken the time over Christmas and you've break relaxed and you've got some mental space to have a nice artifact to write into, to put your thoughts into in your plan, it's just ah, it's just a wonderful experience.

It's anyway, welcome to

Yeah.

Well, it's you know, tooling, tooling matters.

Like I I I think you're like me.

I try to be very judicious and minimal in my tooling.

Like I'm not excited about every new tool, but you know, the the handful of things that I use, I really want them, I really want to like them and use them.

Yeah.

And so, you know, notebook, keyboard, um, laptop.

I was mentioning to you before we started, I got a new, I upgraded my personal laptop.

So it's just a MacBook Pro.

Um, but mine was a number of years old, and I went on the Apple site and I saw that you could uh, you know, I could get a still get some money back.

So I was like, okay, I'll update upgrade.

Um shipped it to New Hampshire too, no sales tax.

Whoop, whoop, so I had to drive up there in a snowstorm.

But then uh as they do, they it they s they were like, oh, your laptop was too banged up.

So now basically they didn't offer me what they said they would.

So now I was like, you know, instead of twelve hundred dollars, they're like, how about two hundred dollars?

And I was like, Oh, no, no, that's a thousand dollars.

Like, oh, ooh.

So it's gonna be a family laptop for the next 15 years.

And uh,

Because you've got the same one you or you had the same one that I had, which I believe.

You got the the M1.

No, and then of course I was like, well, why did I even do it in the first place?

And then my new So tooling, I think not so much guilt, just like annoyance.

Yeah, right.

Like I I I try really hard not to go on Reddit, but I love the mildly infuriating subreddit because just all these things you're just like, oh god, I'm not alone.

You know, it's like someone parking slightly or someone just these it's like I don't know, maybe Seinfeld kind of stuff where in small amounts I love it.

So that's that's my laptop saga, but but that being said, having good tools matters.

Just I think but you and I both don't go overboard because then you're just wasting time.

It's like there's a new there's a new way to do the same thing I know.

It has to be a lot better to warrant it.

I mean, um, so I've we had so we got the uh I don't know what it was, it's the M1 Pro Max thing.

It was the like the the yeah, the biggest one when it came out, and it had I don't know 64 gigs of RAM.

Yeah, so I just I'm just using it for programming and I'm still like enamored by it, and it's still a great laptop for me, and it's still the best m machine I've ever owned.

But you making videos, and I guess that's where it starts to do.

I had two terabytes and I needed I was ma I that was the real thing that put it over.

I was like, so part of that is this audio, video takes up a ton.

I also have I have like 700 what is it, gigabytes of like personal family photos and videos.

Oh right, okay.

Like it's not all mine, but like my my father passed away, so I now I have like my dad on my laptop, you know, like which I haven't fully gone through.

So I was just like, you know what, like if something is worth just keeping, and I have this whole system as you do, so I have external hard drive, so external hard drive, laptop, and then cloud.

So I'm like, I don't want to lose this stuff.

Yeah, right.

Okay.

But yes, the videos, more, more to come on videos.

Uh so anyway, so mildly and you know, worth it, mildly annoying, you know, what's a thousand dollars between friends, you know.

Oh my god.

Um This is why they're so profitable.

This is a good idea.

Oh, I'll try not to.

So you were on the socials yesterday, so you have been rereading.

There's there's this book, Working in Public, that we both read, both really loved about open source.

Um what what what was what were you beating the drum about?

You had you had it came at it with a new angle a couple years on and maybe post-break.

And so it and I remember reading it back then, and I was just enthused by it.

It's like it kind of if you read the opening chapters of working in public, it kind of described like working in Django.

scene, you felt scene.

You're like, oh, it's yeah, this is a thing.

It was amazing.

Um, you know, the author's personal opinions might have gone a bit sort of left field in the commentar.

And I was like, oh, this is a bit sad because I enjoyed the book.

But then I saw a talk from um Christopher Naulberger.

Yes, we'll find it

on the way.

We'll link it, we'll link it in the thing about and criticizing it and uh the book in terms of how it didn't account for the kind of um Python um model.

It kind of puts forward this model of a stadium approach to to running um um open source projects, and it kind of makes this argument that it's a necessary development of the way GitHub and and all the rest makes it so that the only sustainable model is this stadium approach where you've got a few kind of like stars and then a big audience watching them do, and that's not how it's done really in the Python world, and it's not really how we think of development in Django, we think of it as being community-based, as being a f

ederation or a club, um, or being a commons that we're building together.

And the argument in working in public kind of is telling the story of how that commons is eroded by things like GitHub and eroded by um the growth of open source so that more and more um projects become available, but people are less and less engaged with them.

And I that and as I'm rereading it, I'm like, wow, this is just in contrast to reading it four years ago.

As I'm rereading it, I'm like, this is describing a hellscape.

It really, a dystopian hellscape.

I I saw that and I was like, okay, fine, I'm gonna like because you had a thread, I think, with Jeff, but that was like strong strong words, yeah.

I pulled out a few on the on the the two.

And and there are points in the book which it was it the book is kind of making as a sort of positive thing.

Hey, isn't this great that we're evolving this way?

Which, as a member of the Django community, I look at and think, but if that's the exact thing we're trying to avoid, that's what we in Django fight so hard against.

And so I from in January, I'll I'll I'll I'll finish reading it, I'll finish writing it.

Probably my stack report for January will be a kind of write-up on my take of rereading, um uh rereading working in public after this time, and after watching Christopher's talk and yeah, a few other things I've heard.

I mean, I remember her she was I mean, she when she wrote that book, she was she was in Silicon Valley.

So I think it was pretty rah-rah, and there was a sense of people didn't know how open source worked, right?

So it it it went, it has details, but I think it's more designed for people who are like, what is this open source thing?

Yeah.

Um and I was when I read it, I was impressed by the by the depth and the commonality.

You know, she spoke to a lot of the things that we felt in Django, which it felt like, oh, that was unique to Django, but it's like, no, there is this thing around popular open source projects, but you know, extending it out now where you know GitHub has really monopolized things, right?

And then, you know, people buying stars, and then is is it just like is it just like LinkedIn?

Is it just something you're putting on your resume?

You know, you can buy stars, like it's a little bit of a perversion, and then at the same time, the bag is being held by these tiny people, you know, supporting monopolies that you know, it's not just that they're stealing the code, they're also like making money off you know, GitHub on it.

Um and then but there's this kind of celebration of a thing that four years later we're looking back and thinking like so there's one line about um how GitHub did to open source what things like Facebook and Instagram did to the web.

And isn't that great?

And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, that's the exact thing we don't want.

And it's like, oh okay.

So I've got a lot to I'm still, you know, I'm still going through it, I'm still reading it.

Um and I it'll take me a little while to put my together my thoughts slowly, but as I was reading it, I was just increasingly found my muck my jaw dropping in sort of sort of oh uh like and eventually I just cracked and had to post something on the social.

But I had been off.

I'd been I'd been I'd you know poked in occasionally, but I'd from um the Wednesday um where I finished my work, I I I I'd sort of stopped at lunchtime and then I had to nip back on because um there was some Django news that

No, no,

It's that there was a Django uh the steering council was okay.

We're gonna we're gonna talk now about our our professional stuff.

So congratulations, steering council member, top vote getter, Carlton.

Uh you know, so you were you weren't totally sure that you wanted to do it, but then you like talk about the process for you.

Being be let's be clear the fellows are the most have the most significant leadership roles in Django.

They they are the driving force behind the project, and they are they they're just involved in so many decisions that they are

Um, it just de facto is.

And so when I finished, I was very much like, no, I'd want to step away from that.

And I'm not leaving Django in any way, I'm not leaving Django, but I didn't want to be in those leadership roles.

So I thought I might run for the board in the future, I might run for the steering council in the future, but it would be like after the 5.x cycle and after this 6.x cycle coming up, and so maybe 7.x I might, you know, see where we were then.

But that was what I'd mentally said.

And then, of course, because we had all the issues with the 5.x steering council and it being short-handed, and the election there didn't go well, and then there was a big talk, and then I still wasn't sure.

And and then somebody who I won't name explicitly reached out and said, Hey, and I was like, Okay, all right, I will run.

And so I put my hand my hat in, and well,

And I think my you know, my take to you was, well, I know you have opinions, it's just do you feel like you have the energy to I know you do you feel like you have the energy to do it?

You know, it's like

But you know, I think yeah, you'd you got in the push and hopefully had enough of a break.

And then and it's also the steering council historically, and probably in its new iteration, it's not being a fellow.

Like it is uh it's not a full-time thing, you're not being paid.

At the same time, there are these overriding things we've talked about in the podcast and the community that it does feel like some you know some changes need to be made.

That's why some people stepped down.

So it's yeah, probably more important than ever to have committed people on it.

And I think it is a delicate time for Django.

I think um there's a lot of new enthusiasm, and we need to make sure that that's channeled effectively.

And Django is a big beast and it's hard to steer.

And um, if we push in the wrong way, there will be resistance and we will spend an awful lot of time um just fighting and achieving very little.

Whereas if we can just angle ourselves right, we can probably um work around the concerns that people will have and find that we can make progress much more effectively.

And so the reason why ultimately I ran was I think I can be helpful in that discussion, or I feel I can be helpful in those discussions.

Um and my experience as a fellow.

So you got you know, that's the thing that I was surprising to me is I didn't realize we're now at 400 individual members of Django, which is which is great, which is a lot.

It was under when I when I got you know brought in and was on the board, we are under 200.

Uh so that's a doubling in four or five years.

And you know, it's as with all growth, it's good in that it more people, you know, more people can vote, you know.

So more than half of the people voted.

It also means instead of being something where reasonably at a Django con US or Europe you can decide things, it's not the case.

But you know, the community is not just people who have the ability to go to these conferences.

Um, it never was, but I think that's a that's uh ultimately a strength, but it brings growth challenges in a way that you know the community is global and you know 400 people is a lot to manage as the you know first ring, and then I suppose the you know the board and the steering council and and the fellows, and that's and that but that's it, right?

And then there's just the online forum.

Like the I mean what this is coming out of my reading of working in public again, but one of the problems that we're gonna have is we either find a way of um breaking the work up into smaller groups that can operate individually, or we're gonna reach these kind of communication barrier problems where we we and we we see this in Django at the moment, where we we we try and reach consensus, but there are so many voices and so many opinions and so many um legitimate concerns, competing legitimate concerns, that we reach

impasse very quickly.

And if we can't find a way of modernizing, we're we're not that that's the challenge I think we we have to solve.

And I think most people, well, I don't know, maybe that's not true.

I when I worked in companies and in organizations, it's better to make a decision and then maybe say, Oh, that was the wrong one, rather than not make any decisions and not make any changes, because then everyone's unhappy.

Um and you're just sort of hypothetically things to death.

And so along those lines, we have this came out in November, but there's a new board, or there's new four new board members.

Um, and there was a lot of I think 19 or 9, was it 19 people went out for the steering council?

Was it the board?

There was a lot of there's a lot of people for both, um, which was great to see.

I feel like there wasn't always aware.

I mean, I I don't want to just paraphrase everything as when I was on the board, but I feel like most people didn't even know there was a board.

Now sure.

Like I feel like the awareness has grown a little bit about you know how Django is actually run and these issues, and in a way that um, you know, so we have a lot of people and a lot of people who come in, you know, with mission statements saying this is what I want to achieve and like clear goals.

And it's it's moved a little bit from keeping the lights on to no, we want to, you know, the number of people want to have an executive director, you know, and not not everyone, but like that's that's a very clear thing that the board is gonna discuss and maybe do things on, as opposed to let's just not go bankrupt, you know.

One is the change in the generation, the change of the gener the guard, changing of the guard, so to speak.

Like there's the whole new wave of of people globally that are involved in Django, and then there's that combined with the bad timing of COVID.

I mean, COVID was never gonna come at a good time, right?

Global pandemic, two years shutdown and all the rest.

That was never gonna come at a good time, but the there was almost like a perfect storm of people, uh older hands stepping away, exactly as at the moment when the COVID hit, and it's like, oh, are we gonna survive?

Well, okay, yes, now and now we've got fresh impetus, and it's nice to see um so many people stand by the board, and then the people who are elected, they're gonna do a great job.

And the same with the steering council, I think it was 11, 12 people for the steering council.

And any of those, any five of those would have been just like, yeah, we'll be fine, we'll be fine.

This is this is all positive.

So yeah, you know, I'm excited.

I'm excited.

I always say I'm excited for about where we're going, but I really am.

I think it's a good time.

So Django Congress Japan is February 22nd.

That's online conference.

DjangoCon Europe in Dublin, April 23rd.

DjangoCon US was just announced.

Yep.

So lots of events.

And I think uh the call for proposals for DjangoCon Europe is open, about to close.

Whether it's it's uh whether it's closed by the time the show goes out, I can't say.

We know when we started, we're like we're both trying to restart our brains.

We're like, how professional do we need to be here?

Like what's going on?

When and I

That's fine.

So let's just um

So it's you, Will.

Um, but you um so Stack Report.

That this was like your big, your big well, you have paths, but that's sort of your professional thing.

That's not for public consumption.

But Stack Report is your big 2024.

Um I'm still I'm still having the time in my life from there.

And all I'm trying to do really is keep mature.

That's maturing nicely.

And we've got we've two years in nearly, we've got a year to go, we need to get um, we've got runway for that year, we need to get um some more customers in that year, and if we do, we've got a proper business.

So that's quite exciting.

Um, I can't say any more than that.

It the year.

So I'm exactly in that place, but it's enriching nicely, and there's some really exciting things that I'm getting to build, and things that have been on the pipeline that you think, oh yeah, I don't know, want to want to work on that, and extracting those slowly but surely into you know, upstream into Neapolitan or into Django or into channels and see where those go.

Um, and uh I would be much further ahead if uh if I could clone myself two or three times, but I can't.

So you know these things happen as the time they have.

But I'm really enjoying it, and that's going well.

And then the sort of side project for 2024 was the stack report, which is my monthly newsletter, which is a premium thing, it's a you know five bucks a month or you know 50 a year if you want to, and that's just a nominal thing.

People are always like, do GitHub sponsors, and I was like, I hate GitHub sponsors, like it's it's not for me.

So I wanted to do something where there was a kind of actual thing you got, and what you get is the newsletter, and it's been really well received and it's been going really well, and I'm excited to be writing um each month.

It's given me a kind of discipline to that writing, it's given me a kind of like because I've got subscribers, I'm committed, and it out it's coming regularly, and I'm having I'm having a good time with it.

And so um, yeah, that's that was really nice to a launch it and be for it to be so well received.

Yeah.

One of the orchestration tools, he had this amazing talk about you know, free versus not talking about Docker and Kubernetes and all these things.

And like everything doesn't have to be free, I guess is the point.

Like, and in fact, like and then you know, for someone like you, like you do so much for the community and things like to have something that's paid, like it's not changing your life money, but it's enough to give you the discipline.

It's enough to feel like, oh, these are people who you know they really want to read it, right?

Like, I do think it's important to have a couple things where it's like this is this this is a paid thing, and then I have all these other things, like you can't just into you know, because then if you get burned out, it's like well, okay, like uh I'm gonna stop doing stuff, you know.

Like I don't know, finding that balance.

I I I've I see more and more people, especially writing, who are like, you know, I'll take a hundred paid people over a thousand free ones and trying to monetize that elsewhere.

And I think that's ultimately healthy.

Like if you have a niche, if you have things you care about saying, and if people care about it, like you know, it doesn't everything doesn't have to be free, I guess.

I mean, because certainly everyone else, look at the LLMs, everyone else is hoovering up our free stuff and charging for it, you know.

So there's some balance there that requires a recalibration or a rethink, you know, periodically.

I can do a newsletter like me

Um, but yeah, and I don't know, I mean, all the open source stuff, and again, this that keep harping back to this traumatic experience of rereading working in public, but like you give away so much, and the value is constantly degraded, and the c it's like without the community aspect, without the buy-in from people, there's nothing that makes it worthwhile.

And so to have a small community around the newsletter is a really nice thing, and people can reply and they get and you know have conversations with them, and it's it it it's a bit of it's a pleasure to be able to write something slightly longer formed, slightly more considered.

That I took a you know, I think about it all month and I write it, and yeah, it it's it's it's just enjoyable in a way that if I were to just put blog posts out, it wouldn't be.

I mean, I've I've felt recently that I've looked look back over a year in reviews sometimes I there's a lot of public-facing stuff, and sometimes there isn't so much, right?

Sometimes there is, I feel like, yeah, what what do I have what do I have to say, or what does someone have to say about a thing?

Like I've I feel like there's some periods you're just like, well, I want to share a lot, and then sometimes it's just absorbing and taking things in.

And um, you know, like speaking for myself, like I don't think I have a I couldn't do a monthly newsletter, not on programming, you know.

I just do all the work and none of the yeah.

But you know, but there's I don't know, there's peri periods of life and maybe anyways, it's it's good that there's clearly a lot of things, you know.

We talk about things in the podcast, but to have the discipline and think like, oh, there are these things changing and and someone with experience and thoughts, um, you know, that's what I want to read, right?

Especially these days, you don't want to just read noise.

You know, someone who has a take and has a considered opinion, even if you don't agree with it, at least it's something you feels like you know, eating your vegetables.

And I like vegetables, right?

It's not like a painful thing.

All right, anyways, so good, well done.

Why was I able to do that?

Well, because I could I could come up with a quote and nine times out of ten I'd hit the quote, right?

I mean, that led to I think pre previous you talking about it led to me doing my talk.

It led to actual changes in in Django itself, things that you know I still have a ticket to add uh user um profile models to um you know, so it has real anyways.

Well done.

Any any and

And this year I've got thoughts already lining up.

Well, what am I gonna do on the this year?

I've got thoughts on um like some more software engineering topics about you know how you why it is you know, people Django, why do why do I still use Django?

Well, because it's the perfect starting point, right?

But then how do you grow it?

And this was when we had Hinnek on the podcast, and we talked touched on some of those.

But to like look at, I always say the um I've been for years, I've um I've hated the uh soft delete flag, you know, when you have got deleted flag, and I just think that's an anti-pan.

I think it causes all number of problems that you know people don't like.

And it I've never had the time to sit down and write up exactly why it is that I think it's an anti-pan.

And so if you need to reconstruct the um a delete it, you delete the model, but you've got the history events in a log, which you can then reconstruct the life of the model from.

So you don't keep a deleted model in the database, but you you're able to um or you've got an audit log of its entire history, basically.

Um and

There's that Django lifecycle package, right?

I I don't.

I use a kind of um almost uh an event sourcing approach, which then what's nice about it is it you you can grow from um basic Django uh models into audit logged models, and then you can go all the way to event sourcing if you need to.

If you get to the sort of scale where you can't write um, you can't do these transaction bound rights to an active record because you you just got too much traffic or too much contention, or you know, you need you've got um uh competing requests that you need to handle in a you know in a non-racy way.

So you need to go to one of these uh command query request separation, you know.

Okay, all right.

But for me to write that up, it's been something that I've had on the back burner for years, but literally I've never had the time to write it up.

So, you know, yeah, having the newsletter is is a way that I'll be able to write that up over a few in the course of a few months.

So that's exciting.

And I do think you know, there is that old you know adage, you don't really, you know, why do you write, you know, you write to know your own thoughts.

Was that you know various people have said words to that effect, but it's true, I think.

No, exactly.

If you can't write something down, the process of writing something down clarifies what you do in fact think.

Yes.

Yes.

So quick quickly on me.

So I have a new job.

I guess that's the big news, and something I've been doing in the background, which has contributed to not maybe seeming like I'm publicly doing all that much, which is starting Monday, January 6th.

I've I'm joining JetBrains PyCharm as a developer advocate.

So I'm very much looking forward to this actually.

I've I've long planned to go back to keep keep all my stuff, um, but move it a little more into maintenance or on the side role and you know get back in the swing of things.

And the JetBrains crew I've known for quite a number of years.

They stewards of the Django community, they do the sponsorship every year, which I worked on when I was on the board.

I know um, you know, Paul Everett, who's been very involved, and um Sarah Boyce before she became a fellow was briefly in this role.

So I'm planning to stay a little bit longer than she did.

I have no des no uh goals goals, or probably anyone wants me to be a Django fellow.

Uh, but it will be so I don't have a lot to say about it because I haven't started, but it will be working, doing, writing videos, podcasts, um, I think still going to conferences, being part of the communities, being the the web communities, it might expand beyond that to Python is big in data science, ML.

Um, there's other people who work on that.

We shall see, but I

I mean, that is the big fish these days.

There are people who do that, but you know, that is the question.

How do you how do you how do you how does Django fit in there?

How does web fit in there?

Because you know, they still gotta put it out there and share it somehow.

And like, you know.

Put your pandas online using uh the flask or the fast API, you know, how the world, but you could just spin up a nano Django example, and you you know that's in your video, and then all of a sudden these people are using Django instead of something else.

So this is our this is our secret weapon.

And a big part of having this private office, which nobody can see, is to have a dedicated space uh to do these things.

So yeah, that's a new thing.

I'm excited.

I'll mention things I have to mention, but it also I want to make clear that that is separate from this, so they know the JetBrains Python team knows that I have the podcast, I have the newsletter, I have the Learn Django site.

That will all exist and that will all still be doing stuff on it.

Um I'm just not gonna be doing um as much maybe new things.

So I have I I have my three courses, I'm finishing up the updates on APIs and professionals.

I'm very close, not quite there.

I wanted to, I wanted to, you know, pre pre-break, I was like, I'm gonna get that all that done and just come in, you know, with all that done.

But it's not fully done, but it will be.

I've been working on it.

It'll be better for the break, to be honest.

Um, I have the e-commerce course, which is still half to two-thirds done.

So that probably won't come out this month, but it will come out in the next couple of months.

Um as I but I'm gonna go

You should say it's coming out in Q3.

But I do want to talk about um the big thing for me, you know, last year was I finally got the learnjango.com site out, which I don't think we've talked about.

Um and so I had a Black Friday sale, I had the user payments, it all worked, which was honestly a little bit surprising because it's like just just me, you know, staring at my computer and but

Well, it this is the thing.

Like there's no there's no external thing, there's nobody who's like reviewing my stuff and saying, like, oh, that was that was good.

You know, it's just like going down the list one thing after another, and then I think I was also very tired at the end of the year, and so I finally got out.

I did the Black Friday, but that meant the whole Black Friday period, I was online the whole time, and I mentioned to all the people who bought ebooks that you can um get access to the new site because I'm I'm the long-term goal is to switch the site and then print books, so a lot of you know, hundreds and hundreds of emails from definitely a couple hundred.

I'm not I'm trying not to exaggerate, at least three or four hundred emails from people.

Um, and that's still manual.

So I have the Django admin going for my courses and you know, can I make that better?

Yes, will I?

Yes, no, and this moment, and you know, in this moment, I'm just gonna get done.

And it's also a chance to email with people because they ultimately, like if I look at my sales and how I've made my living the last six, five, six years, um, it's not that many people, you know.

I mean, it's a couple that it's thousands, but it's not it's not more than 10,000.

And so it's important to like have a chance to, you know, have a brief conversation if they want about like, oh, like what what did you find useful, like updates, new things.

Um, you know, because that that is who I in a sense I work for, you know, the the paid people anyways.

Like I'm enjoying communicating with my users, with my kind, with my customers, with the people who bought the books and seeing what they've got to say.

And I was like really touched by that.

That you you you know ultimately this is why no, but this is ultimately this is why your stuff is so good, right?

Is because you you've got that empathy to reach out instead of just I'm gonna script out and not speak to them.

No, I'm gonna one by one deal with these with these requests to see and that that connection is irreplaceable, right?

You you can't you can't get it back if you script that up.

I benefit, yeah.

Um, so yeah, so that's that.

Um maybe we'll do a longer one.

I mean, the the site itself, uh I think I don't have enough distance on, you know, we we talked one time, like, let's do a whole episode on like building this e-commerce site, which we could do, but it's a part of me is also like, oh, I just want to go on to the next thing.

But at the end of the day, like I very much like elegant code.

Like I work in all my examples and books to think a ton and then try to make it as elegant but not overly clever.

So like I still want someone else to be able to come in and see how it works.

But ultimately, I have it's a Django site.

I've got markdown, I write things in the admin, I've got tutorials which are free, and so there's some you know reviews and permissions on that.

Then I've got courses where you have to have an account and you have to have access to that.

Um payments.

Yeah.

At some point I'll do a there's a your user progress thing.

I think this is the problem with coding in a way is that you do all these things, and as soon as you're done, you're just like meh, on to the next thing.

There's no sense of like, oh, that's quite this is kind of that's quite cool that I did that.

And it's also, and I think maybe the slightly insidious thing is it's not it's just this sand castles, you know, it's sand castles on the beach.

And so you it requires constant maintenance too.

So that's that's part of the thing that I've spent this past year.

I spent a lot of time updating my tutorials, updating courses.

And that's like kind of the that's the less satisfying work, but that's also the necessary work that you know makes a difference.

So well,

Like it's just uh it's this fixed thing, right?

It's not the fixed thing, like all the time you're constantly needing to keep it maintained.

It's a ton of work to do, but like keep it going more than a year, and then you're like, you know, I think then you get the gut check check of why are you doing it?

Because it's not financial.

Like, I I've certainly would have, you know, as well as I've done, I would have done better just having a job.

Um but it was I wanted to, I had, you know, personally I've got young kids, so I had flexibility.

Like, but you have to, I think you have to really, really want to teach to keep it going because it's you know, like I updated 50 blog 50 tutorials last year, but like it's invisible, it's completely invisible, you know, whereas somebody could look and see, ooh, you 50 to 50 tutorials, and every time you write it, you post it on LinkedIn and Reddit and you get feedback and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

No, it's like I just took that thing and it's almost more work to update something because both the code changes a little bit, but also my understanding of how I had presented changes.

And that's and it and I was actually happy to see that in your emailing with customers, there were a few that had um read the 5.0 update to beginners and had recently read an earlier version, and some of them were pointing out, you know, oh, I really like this, this, this.

I saw that you did that, and I was like, Oh, thank God.

Because I don't expect anyone to know that, but like it's so much work and there is so much difference, yet it's all within the marketing banner of the same thing.

And so, yeah, this banging in the background.

That's okay, Carlton.

You know, still gonna

be doing that.

One, um, you should make sure that you boot you you do mention every time you update, Ron, because and you do repost on LinkedIn because like you're you being modest, right?

I had to, you know, because when I was interviewing with Jeff Brands, they're like, Well, do you have a resume or LinkedIn?

And I was like, Oh, um, I have had those.

I like, you know, gleefully or whatever got off LinkedIn five or six years ago.

Let it be.

Uh but yes, but it uh even I even I doing it professionally fall into this trap of you do all this effort to make the thing and then to just put it on those socials, to do all the things.

Sometimes you just like can't be bothered.

Um yeah, I should do the updates because it doesn't, I know a

That's an important thing because then people see it and they go, Oh yeah, I'll read that one.

But no, so that was one point.

Second is you must have some some call to action or some thing that I could I know you're too shy to like possibly

But I have a three-course bundle, so I have my beginners book, APIs and professionals.

The beginners one is fully up to date.

The APIs and professionals are in the process of being updated, so they're still on the 4.0 version.

So they almost entirely work, but there's a couple small things.

Um I will have updates for that soon.

But you get $30 off if you buy all three.

Plus, you get lifetime access, lifetime updates.

You can email me, I'll engage with you.

So I highly recommend you do that.

Um that's the offer.

That it will always be the offer, is something of individual and then something for all of them.

Like I don't want to play games with being too.

Thank you.

Yes, yes.

Well, and I would just say people teach differently.

If you find any of my tutorials or things and you think that's a mind I can follow, like you're gonna like it.

Um and enough people like it that I have done it and continue to do it.

So thank you.

Yes, and yeah, even as an MBA,

I'm gonna make you market even if you won't do it yourself.

Yeah.

No, but I honestly hadn't even thought about saying anything about the updates.

I should I should do that.

That's smart.

All right, so anyways, all right, what else?

Oh, the podcast.

We are gonna have we have some people lined up to sponsor the podcast, which you'll see them in here.

Um, there's information on DjangoChat.com, but basically you can do per episode, or if you do five episodes, you get a discount.

It's the price of four.

It reaches a couple thousand people highly engaged.

If you're in the Django space, then it's not a bad thing

If you were in the Python space, maybe not exactly your cup of tea, but if you're in the Django space, like this is well, this

is it.

And we are, you know, we are we are back.

Our brains are we'll be fully started up with we'll have guests after this.

We have a whole bunch of guests lined up.

It won't just be us going on and on, but we'll have guests diving into Django, and there's a lot, there's a lot that's happening um both in Django and the guests that we have lined up.

I'm super excited about because we just get to ask them questions and um I'm I'm not gonna say names until the episodes come out, but we have a whole bunch of people lined up that we've wanted to have on for years.

A couple people we've had on before, they're doing really new, cool things.

So yeah.

What else?

I mean, we can say happy new year to everybody, right?

And you know it.

Happy New Year.

All right.

Well, thanks everyone for thanks everyone for listening.

And DjangoChat.com.

We'll see you all next time.

Bye bye.