Welcoming. That’s the word that comes to my mind when I think about PyCon UK 2025.
PyCon UK is the main Python conference in the UK. This year’s edition took place a week ago - mid-September - in Manchester at Contact Theatre. I attended the conference in person and gave a talk, too.
My way to Manchester
In May, I was thinking about extending Python with Rust. I had done it at work and in a hobby project and it had turned out to be far easier and more convenient than I thought. People should know about that!
When I saw someone advertising the PyCon UK CFP, I figured out that I might as well pitch a talk about it. I used to think that conferences and giving talks was not for me. However, attending Heart of Clojure made me change my mind.
To my surprise, the talk proposal was accepted. Another surprise was that it attracted full audience.
The title of the talk is Python and Rust, a perfect pairing and it is about extending Python with Rust using PyO3, Maturin, and rustimport. The talk video is already on YouTube and the slides are here. Check it out!
If you’d like to see me present it live, you still have a chance. I’m going to give the talk again at PyCon Finland 2025 in Jyväskylä on Oct 17 - slightly improved based on feedback.
The other talks
You can fit a lot of talks in three days. What most piqued my interest were the talks about Python performance. Sasha Romijn talked about Python performance mistakes. Kolen Cheung compared Numba and JAX. Peichao Qin talked about extending Python with C++ and Pybind11. My talk contributed to this theme as well.
Out of the three keynotes, my favorite was the one by Sheena, titled Playing the long game. It was a balanced take on the LLM tools and how they might be affecting software development careers, especially the people early in their careers.
It’s a different tack, but there was a rehearsed reading of Emily Holyoake’s play Ada. I enjoyed it a lot.
The hallway track
The hallway track is the most important track in every conference.
For me, it was a chance to meet a bunch of Internet friends in person for the first time. That was great! I also met with a number of new people and talked with them about Python and Rust, and about climbing and life. That was great, too.
So what made the conference welcoming? It’s not just one thing, but the conference’s inclusion efforts seemed to pay off, as noted by keynote speaker Hynek Schlawack.
Manchester
I didn’t have a chance to see that much Manchester, but I did see Oxford Road a lot. My hotel was on Oxford Road, as was the conference venue, as was the main bar we went to, as was Manchester Museum (they have frogs), as were the coffee places I had my morning coffee at.
After the conference, I did a walk in Peak District near Kinder Scout. The day was stunning and the scenery beautiful. This time, I was lugging all my stuff with me, so I had to walk. The next time, it would be great to run the route and explore further. If there’s a PyCon UK in Manchester in 2026, I will do it.