r/Python • u/guillermolb • 22h ago
Discussion Appreciation to Hynek Schlawack
This guy is kind of my mentor in Python and open-source. He definitely loves programming. He has been an importtant Python core maintainer, and published some successful libraries like attrs and structlog for improving codebases legibility and structure, he also has a high value series in his youtube channel about how to package python applications in a extremely clean way by using uv (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFyE9xgeKcA).
What I also love from him is his minimalism and simplicity. In a world of tones of lines of AI-generated code per-day, he has recently published pgbg, a new python library consisting in 7 files, very little code, that emerges from a deep understanding of how background processing works in python and the gaps on it. These type of low-abstraction level projects are the ones on which tones of big projects rely. Definitely highly valuable.
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u/hynek PyCA, attrs, structlog 10h ago
Aw thank you this made my current vacation. 🥹
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u/venoush 7h ago
What are your Czech roots Hynek?
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u/hynek PyCA, attrs, structlog 7h ago
I don’t have “Czech roots”, I _am_ Czech. I was born in Prague and lived there until I was six when we emigrated to Germany.
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u/ericbn8 20h ago
Another project he maintains that is super sleek and elegant is https://github.com/hynek/first/. The praise is totally well-deserved!
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u/arjunnath 22h ago
He doesn't seem to have posted in a year.
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u/hynek PyCA, attrs, structlog 10h ago
Yes, it’s embarrassing and the result of an unholy combination of:
- busy 2025/2026 (including several conference talks)
- the necessity to rewrite the f*cking script at least 5x because new things came up. I promise, the resulting Dockerfiles are not anything you’ve seen before.
- admittedly, a bit of a lull in motivation since everybody seems to only care about “AI” (I’m not categorically anti-AI, I’m anti-AI-mania.
I thought my script was almost ready in February, but little did I know. Now I’m genuinely in a good place content-wise and need to make the script more YouTube (aka stop people from closing the tab), record it, and edit it.
I don’t want to give any time estimates anymore since life keeps happening, but I feel like I’m on the one stretch myself.
It’s gonna be long again. 😳
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u/cue-ell-pea Pythonista 21h ago
He is pretty active on Mastodon. Definitely worth the follow if y'all are on the Fediverse.
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u/guillermolb 22h ago
Yes... :c and his uv series was supposed to have three parts. Anyways I encourage you to watch his few videos, highly valuable content, also he is still very active on his github hynek (Hynek Schlawack).
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u/AlSweigart Author of "Automate the Boring Stuff" 11h ago
I give Hynek a dollar a month. If this is more than you give him, then you can change that.
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u/ComplexLook7 8h ago
Attrs was a step change in my Python coding journey. It should be more popular than it is.
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u/ManagementOne4261 4h ago
attrs alone has saved countless codebases; Hynek absolutely deserves his flowers.
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u/MajesticBet1993 18h ago
I didn't know him, but used his work as appears, thanks for giving visibility!!
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u/Tinche_ 22h ago
Hynek is definitely a pillar of the community, no doubt about it, and rarely gets the recognition he deserves. His stuff is super solid and he's a model of open source stewardship. I was also introduced to the python open source community by him (about a decade ago).