The PSF just created a new mailing list, "PSF-Community", then autosubscribed a bunch of people and solicited introductions. At first I was surprised, but I was quickly charmed by the response and joined in on the action. Here's what I wrote:

If Alex Martelli is doing it, then brace yourselves because the floodgates are open.

I first used Python as a junior in a South Dakota high school, off a Knoppix CD because "Live CDs" were all the rage then. It was a good fad because I didn’t have a computer, and the Windows machines at school weren’t writable and didn’t have Python (2.2 at the time). I read a bit of the tutorial and wrote a really bad prime number sieve.

After a professional loop through Java, C++, C#, and finally PHP, I resumed Python development in 2009 as a full-stack web developer at PayPal. I wrote the tool that (still) manages all the pricing arrangements.

From there I hired my first teammate and we wrote a couple other business-critical components before standardizing out PayPal’s first grassroots alternative stack. That was early 2011 and since then we’ve had a lot of fun and come so far. Now we’re focusing on PayPal’s security offerings: putting Python at the very heart of PayPal’s availability model, handling billions of requests per day. And believe me when I say that’s it’s the best thing that’s happened to PayPal’s security in a long time! The details will have to wait for a future blog post (and upcoming O’Reilly project). Or, if you’re remotely as excited as I am, you can email me directly. :)

On the side, I really enjoy working on Wikipedia-based projects > under the banner of Hatnote, all Python. Most recently, we did the official Wikipedia IFTTT channel (handling 1.3 million requests per day). And because I can’t get enough, a bunch of open-source stuff, most notably Boltons, where I’ve been particularly busy lately.

If you’re in the Bay Area, do not hesitate to reach out to talk about Python, Wikipedia, security, federated and open systems (like BBS stuff), or even PayPal!

Specifically, this is sort of odd, but October 14th at 1pm, I'm doing an overview of Python usage at PayPal, and would like to invite anyone senior and curious to be my guest and come to PayPal in San Jose to check it out. Guido came in 2012 and he loved it. And stuff now is waaaay cooler!

Anyways, I just wanted to end by saying thanks to you all. If you hadn't been so numerous and out there, I probably would have gotten myself fired long before any of this bore fruit. ;)

THANKS!

Mahmoud

There were a lot of autosubscribed folks deploring the spammish inquisition and threatening unsubscription, so here's hoping my straw didn't break too many camels backs.