Random Interview: Denis Bilenko

What's your name and what do you do?

Denis Bilenko, I'm working on an awesome new startup SiteSupport.com that implements screen sharing for webapps. I'm mostly doing backend part where it's all Python with a few C/Cython pieces for performance.

I also wrote and maintain Gevent, a coroutine-based network library for Python.

How did you start using Python?

My first Python program for which I wasn't the only user was a monitoring application for Particle Accelerator Detector at Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics.

It was supposed to be written in C++, the standard language in the lab, but I was convinced Python is a better fit. My boss was skeptical but open-minded, so we gave it a try. The important part of it was making bindings for a couple C dependencies, where ctypes really simplified things. The project was a success and the development speed felt much more rapid.

Name one Python feature you wouldn't live without

The abundance of quality 3rd party packages besides already rich standard library.

What is your talk/training about?

It is about Gevent and how it makes life of a network/web application developer easier. If you already know what Gevent is, you'll find interesting what's coming in the next major release (the changes are quite serious).

Tease us with one secret that will be revealed during your talk/training

I'll tell what the next major release of Gevent (0.14) does differently when interacting with Python GC and how it affects your program.

If you are not a user of Gevent yet, you might find revealing the fact that managing lots of concurrent connections does not have to be more complex than managing a single one in a simple script.

Name another talk you wouldn't miss in the same track on the same day, and why.

Spotify and Python: love at first sight. I'm curious about this one because Spotify is a prominent user of Gevent.

What would you tell someone who is still in doubt whether to register to EuroPython or not?

If you haven't been to EuroPython before, I recommend to attend, it's a great event to meet interesting, like-minded people. If you already attended, you probably would not have doubts.