Eli Bendersky's website Following Tarek's lead:
1. What’s the coolest Python application, framework or library you have discovered in 2011?
There wasn't a single huge discovery, but I did enjoy using some libs I hadn't previously used. In alphabetical order:
- Found the Python bindings to Clang.
- The colorama library for coloring console output was useful for pss.
- Python bindings to protocol buffers came in handy at work, and is a great tool for the toolbox in general.
- I finally had some chance to play with Twisted, writing some real code based on it (not for production yet).
- I really like the new unit-testing capabilities of Python 2.7 (a.k.a. unittest2)
2. What new programming technique did you learn in 2011?
I got to work much more with continuous integration servers than before. Both at work (using Pulse and Jenkins) and in my Python development role (using Buildbot).
In addition, I got much more experience delivering real Python packages and using some helpful tools like virtualenv and tox for making the task of package development and testing easier. This year pycparser saw a few new releases, pss was released, and there's another project still in stealth mode that also benefits from this experience.
3. What’s the name of the open source project you contributed the most in 2011? What did you do?
Not counting my own open-source projects, that would probably be CPython itself. I became a core developer with commit rights in January, and since then have worked on a lot of issues. Mainly in the standard library, tests and documentation, but also a bit in the core interpreter itself.
4. What was the Python blog or website you read the most in 2011?
I usually don't subscribe to individual blogs, but use Planet Python and Reddit's Python page as aggregators.
5. What are the three top things you want to learn in 2012?
- I gained a lot of understanding on the low-level workings of compilers, linkers, loaders and related technologies this year. I'd definitely want to learn even more.
- To understand the architecture of LLVM better than I do now.
- Javascript. Whether we like it or not, it's the future.
6. What are the top software, app or lib you wish someone would write in 2012?
I would like to see even more code ported to Python 3.
It would also be nice to have much improved voice recognition for Android.