Not everyone comes to software development and Python through four-year computer science programs at universities.

This episode highlights one alternative journey into Python.

Over the course of two episodes, you will meet people who started in other industries and specializations

and now make Python part of their daily experience.

Some of them have used programming to power up their specialization. Others

decided they'd rather just be doing programming full time and made that switch over. This episode

is part one of a two-part series. Our guests this time are Derek Chambers, Jim Tassum, Arash

Shoheli, and Rob Ward. This is Talk Python to Me. Episode 173 recorded July 25th, 2018.

Welcome to Talk Python to Me, a weekly podcast on Python, the language, the libraries, the ecosystem, and the personalities.

This is your host, Michael Kennedy. Follow me on Twitter where I'm at M. Kennedy. Keep up with the show and listen to past episodes at TalkPython.fm.

And follow the show on Twitter via at talk python.

This episode is brought to you by Linode and brilliant.org. Check out what they're offering during

their segments. It really helps support the show. Derek, Jim, Arash, and Rob welcome all of you to

Talk Python. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. It's great to have you all here. I'm really excited about this short series

of shows that I'm doing on people getting into programming and Python from other disciplines

like chemical engineering or accounting, things like that. So I guess we'll get started by

kind of setting the stage and talking about where you're coming from

because you're not really full-time developers. You're doing other stuff and using development as kind of

a superpower. So I guess the first thing I want to ask you guys is what is your industry, what is your

specialization? What do you study? What are you doing day to day? And I guess we'll start with Derek.

Well, I'm a mining engineer who studies earthquakes and works for the Centers for Disease Control.

So I usually get a lot of blank stairs when I introduce myself that way.

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