Introducing Python Developer Miguel Grinberg

Introducing Python Developer Miguel Grinberg

Hello everyone, my name is Miguel Grinberg, and I am super excited to join the Developer Voices team at Twilio.

I have a Masters degree in Computer Science, and for the last few years I’ve been active in open source, mostly within the Python community. I live in a small rural village in Ireland. This is the peaceful and relaxing view that I have from my home office window:

I Love Code

The main thing you need to know about me is that since my teenage years I have been a coder, and the more I code the more I like it.

I learned to code writing video games in the BASIC programming language, on Texas Instruments and Commodore home computers. In those pre-Internet days there wasn’t much of a choice in computer languages, so after being unhappy with the lag in some of my BASIC games I taught myself the only other programming language I could use on these machines: Assembly.

The experience of learning how to code in very high-level and very low-level languages from an early age gave me a greater understanding of all the other languages and technologies that fall somewhere in between these two extremes. Over the years I have worked with many more programming languages including C, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, and my favorite of all, Python.

I Love Python

A few years ago I wanted  to start a blog, but I did not really like any of the standard blogging platforms, which seemed either too primitive or too complex for a tech blog. Instead of using something such as WordPress or Blogger, I decided I should write my own blogging platform, from scratch. This is when I discovered Flask, a Python microframework to build web applications. Flask was fairly new in those days, but had a small community of engaged developers from where a few extensions were starting to emerge. So I built my own Flask based blogging platform, which I continue to use regularly. You can find my blog at https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com.

Fresh out of coding a complete web application using Flask, I realized that there was very little information about this framework outside of the official documentation, so I decided to start my career as a technical blogger with a series of articles on web development with the Flask framework that I called The Flask Mega-Tutorial. Some time later the tutorial was noticed by O’Reilly Media, and I was offered to write the “animal” book on Flask, which is now in its second edition.

Working on the tutorial and the book proved to be a great source of project ideas, so becoming a blogger and writer led me back into coding new and interesting projects. Many of these projects are now open source, and you can find them on my GitHub page: https://github.com/miguelgrinberg.

I Love to Share

As my blogging and open source work started to take off, more and more people took the time to write me a thank you note. Some people even mentioned that thanks to my articles they were able to get a job, or a raise. Comments like these make my day! I realized that sharing what you know is a superpower that allows you to do good.

Sharing is going to be a key aspect of my work at Twilio. As part of my new role you should expect to see an increase in the number of Python articles in the Twilio blog, some written by me, but many more written by contributors. Drop me a line if you would like to write for our blog, as I’ll be more than happy to work with you and help you get published!

Your Turn to Share

I’d love to see what you are building! Feel free to reach out to me through any of the following channels:

• Email: mgrinberg@twilio.com
• Twitter @miguelgrinberg
• GitHub: https://github.com/miguelgrinberg
• Personal Blog: https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com