Feb 14, 2023

Four Open-Source Projects and the Anaconda Maintainers Who Love Them

Team Anaconda

4min

It’s Valentine’s Day, and love is in the air! So grab some chocolates, cuddle up with some of the community’s most cherished open-source projects, and get to know a few of the Anaconda maintainers who are devoted to them.

💚 BeeWare 💚

Spun up in 2014, BeeWare is an open-source project that empowers users to write apps in Python and release them via mobile platforms like iOS and Android. In early 2022, Anaconda was lucky enough to welcome BeeWare founder Russell Keith-Magee to the team, where he continues to advocate for and advance the work of the Python community.

Get To Know Russell

Russell is a Principal Software Engineer at Anaconda, developing GUI tools and libraries to support the development of Python software on desktop and mobile platforms. He joined the Django core team in 2006, and for five years he was president of the Django Software Foundation. He is a frequent speaker at Python and Django conferences around the globe, sharing his experience as a FLOSS developer, community maintainer, and startup founder.

Why Russell Loves BeeWare

It’s incredibly gratifying to hear stories of novice Python developers deploying their first phone apps—something that they wouldn’t have been able to do without using BeeWare. Mobile devices are ubiquitous, and having Python as a viable platform for mobile development means even more people are able to unlock the potential of their devices. I love that my work at Anaconda allows me to make the BeeWare vision a reality and witness the amazing ways people are able to take control of their computing futures.

💚 Conda 💚

Conda offers package, dependency, and environment management for any language—Python, R, JavaScript, and more—on Windows, macOS, and Linux. And as of last year, conda is fiscally sponsored by NumFOCUS. One of conda’s most active advocates is Anaconda Staff Software Engineer Jannis Leidel, who came on board in May 2021.

Get To Know Jannis

Based in Germany, Jannis is a co-founder of the Python Packaging Authority, a volunteer group that has maintained fundamental package management software for the Python programming language for over a decade. Jannis currently serves on the Python Software Foundation (PSF) board of directors. He believes that nurturing the conda project is essential to empowering the growing community of data practitioners.

Why Jannis Loves Conda

Everyone who needs to build or install software likely knows how complicated these tasks can become, depending on the involved projects and platforms. Luckily, package managers like conda can save hours of effort by managing software dependencies and simplifying the installation process. Conda offers a centralized user interface for various tasks involved in software management, allowing users to focus on their work instead of having to figure out how to best compile third-party software components. I believe that’s a big reason why so many people love conda; it empowers them to maintain their software projects more effectively and gives them access to a huge community of practitioners sharing their hard-won insights in the form of conda package recipes, often as open-source projects.

💚 HoloViz 💚

The HoloViz project makes it easier to apply Python plotting libraries to data and even offers a tutorial and sample datasets to help get you started. The HoloViz team maintains Panel, hvPlot, Datashader, and other popular data visualization tools. A longtime member of this team is Dr. James “Jim” Bednar, who leads the HoloViz group at Anaconda.

Get To Know Jim

Jim works with commercial and government clients to improve Python software for visualizing and analyzing large and complex datasets. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas, along with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Philosophy. He has published more than 50 papers and books about the visual system and software development. Before joining Anaconda back in 2015, Jim was a faculty member in Informatics for 10 years at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Why Jim Loves HoloViz

The HoloViz tools help Python users do things they could never do before! Want to make web apps to share your results but don’t have front-end developer experience with JavaScript/HTML/CSS? No problem; use Panel! Have datasets too big for your machine or located on some remote server? No problem; use Datashader! Want to explore your dataset without writing lots of boilerplate code? No problem; use hvPlot! We love seeing users go back to focusing on the domains they care about and letting HoloViz tools take care of all the rest.

💚 PyScript 💚

PyScript has generated a lot of excitement in the open-source community since Anaconda CEO Peter Wang announced its release at PyCon last year, and for good reason. The project seeks to make programming more accessible and fun by facilitating the creation of Python applications right in the browser. Fabio Pliger, Principal Software Architect at Anaconda, is a passionate PyScript co-creator and tech lead.

Get To Know Fabio

Fabio has worked at Anaconda for over eight years. He is a member of the PSF as well as the EuroPython Society (for which he served as chairman from 2012 to 2016), and is a founder of the Python Italia association. As part of his association work, he has helped organize and co-chair several PyCon and EuroPython events over the years. He currently lives in beautiful Austin, Texas with his family, after having spent most of his life in Italy and Brazil.

PyScript’s vision of “programming for the 99%” reflects the main reason why I love the project. Today, programming and data science are privileges enjoyed by few, because it’s really hard to create and distribute applications. PyScript brings Python—the most popular programming language—to the browser and mobile devices without requiring users to install anything. The project is just at the beginning of its journey and it’s exciting to see how it’s already being used in new application creation methods and education patterns that were not previously possible.

💘 Forever Yours, Anaconda

When it comes to the open-source community, there’s a whole lot to love! To follow along with the work our project maintainers are doing, keep an eye on our blog and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. Happy Valentine’s Day from Anaconda!

To share the love, we are offering one month of free access to Anaconda Starter tier with code “LOVEDATA.” For a limited time, this code will grant you full access to these features:

Expert-led, on-demand data science courses
A 100% ready-to-code Jupyter Notebook interface for hands-on practice
5 GB of persistent storage for your projects, models, and data
And much more!

To enjoy this offer, click here and enter the code “LOVEDATA” at checkout to activate your 30-day free trial. This code is valid through February 28, 2023.