In the “embrace, extend, extinguish” days of Microsoft, an evangelist of a language not created by Microsoft would have no constituency inside of the company. Thanks partly to Steve Ballmer, and continued under Satya Nadella, this is not the case. As far as I’m concerned, this is a great thing.
This week we welcome Steve Dower (@zooba) as our PyDev of the Week! Steve is a core developer of the Python language itself where he produces the Windows builds and installers. He also works for Microsoft.
Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc).
I studied mechatronics and software engineering and computer science in Australia, then moved out to the US in 2012 to take a job at Microsoft.
Why did you start using Python?
One of my summer jobs while I was studying was for a startup designing medical diagnosis devices. They had this amazing custom MATLAB-like app for controlling their prototype, and all its scripting was in Python. So I spent a summer driving pumps and motors and reading sensors using Python, then went back to university and never really looked back!
What other programming languages do you know and which is your favorite?
I’ve been developing for a long time now, so I’ve encountered a lot of languages. I actually really enjoy C++, particularly template metaprogramming, because like Python it lets the library developer do a lot of magic that the user never has to know about.
Literary Nirvana 