#23: Wes McKinney – The Creator of Pandas



“I think all of the next decade is going to be really exciting as we see a lot of data science defragmenting and reorienting itself around open standard technologies.” – Wes McKinney

Wes McKinney is the creator and “Benevolent Dictator for Life” (BDFL) of the open-source pandas package for data analysis in Python, and has also authored two versions of the reference book Python for Data Analysis. Wes is also one of the co-creators of the Apache Arrow project, which is currently his main focus. Most recently, he is the founder Ursa Labs, a not-for-profit open source development group in partnership with RStudio.

He describes himself as a problem-solver, and is particularly interested in improving the usability of data tools for programmers, accelerating data access and in-memory data processing performance, and improving data system interoperability.

In my conversation with Wes today, we focused on getting to know Wes on a more personal level, discussing his background and interests to get some insight into the living legend of open source he has become.

Listen or Subscribe

You can listen and subscribe to the show at:

button-applepodcasts  googleplay

overcast  listen_on_spotify-black.png 

sticher-sub-button

…or by searching “Data Journeys” on virtually any podcasting platform

Follow us on Social

       

Show Notes:

  • [3:48] How did coming from four generations of newspaperman impact Wes’s upbringing?
  • [6:00] What kind of hobbies was he interested in growing up, and what is the origin of his interest in computers?
  • [11:08] How did he come to run a Goldeneye 007 world record website, and update and maintain it by hand?
  • [16:10] Wes’s high school career as a mathlete, and how an early interest in math contributed to his approach to programming.
  • [18:15] How wes brings the rigor he learned in mathematics to software engineering.
  • [19:50] How languages and math scratch the same itch for composition.
  • [21:00] About learning enough German to complete a PhP programming internship in Munich.
  • [23:00] How Wes’s experience using data in his first year working post-undergrad set him down the path to Pandas.
  • [25:00] What went into his decision to take leave from grad school to build Pandas?
  • [27:00] The legendary tweet where Wes expressed his sense of purpose and motivation in building Pandas.
  • [29:52] Why Wes’s work is motivated by the desire to free up people’s time to realize their full potential.
  • [30:51] Zero to One – Peter Thiel
  • [31:40] Why is solving basic efficiency problems, like reading CSV files. so important?
  • [34:12] How community management has played such a huge role in making Pandas so successful compared to other tools.
  • [39:00] The importance of seeing peers in an open source project as people with good intentions and more than just a GitHub profile.
  • [46:00] How do the incentives of an open source project influence prioritization in a project?
  • [51:45] How Wes’s newest project, UrsaLabs, is tackling the problem of funding in open source software development.
  • [56:20] Wes’s goals for UrsaLabs over the next five years.

AJ’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajgoldstein393

Wes’s Twitter:https://twitter.com/wesmckinn

Wes’s personal website: http://wesmckinney.com

Wes’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesmckinn/

Support the Show

If you enjoyed this episode of Data Journeys, the best way to support the show is by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing on social media using the hashtag #datajourneys.

Questions or Suggestions?

Got a question, suggestion, or do you just want to say hi? Let AJ know what you think by sending him a note on Twitter at @ajgoldstein393

And don’t forget to join the mailing list (below) to be notified about new episodes, blog posts, giveaways, etc.

Enjoy!