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Python on Windows is OK, actually

Episode #243, published Tue, Dec 17, 2019, recorded Fri, Nov 8, 2019

We all love the Python language. But it's the 200,000+ packages that actually make Python incredibly useful and productive. But installing these libraries and sometimes even Python itself can vary across platforms. In particular, Windows has had a hard time. Many of the library authors don't use Windows and so don't test their packages on that platform. Tutorial authors often start their tutorial steps by activating a virtual environment with $ source venv/bin/activate. This, of course, doesn't work on Windows. Yet, over 50% of all developers programming in Python do so on Windows.

In this episode, you'll meet Steve Dower. He works at Microsoft and is a Python core developer. He has a bunch of stats for us. But he also has tons of good news on how Python on Windows is getting much better.

Links from the show

Steve Dower: @zooba
Steve's PyCon Talk: youtube.com
appdirs package: pypi.org/project/appdirs

Michael on .NET Rocks podcast: dotnetrocks.com
Python for .NET Developer Course: talkpython.fm/dotnet
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm

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Steve Dower
Steve Dower
Steve is an engineer who tells people about Python and then gives them excuses to use it and great tools to use it with. He is a core contributor and Windows expert for CPython, and works at Microsoft making sure Python developers are well supported across Windows, Azure, and other Microsoft platforms.
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