Matthew Wilkes Publishes Book: Advanced Python Development

The longtime member of the Plone community has written a must-have book for experienced developers

As some Plone community members know, one of our own, Matthew Wilkes, has been hard at work writing a book for the last year. We're very excited to announce that it has been published! It is Advanced Python Development: Using Powerful Language Features in Real-World Applications and it can be purchased at Matthew's website, Apress or Amazon.

The book follows the design and build of a real-world application example from prototype to production quality. In this context, it explains Python language features that aren’t routinely covered and introduces techniques that demonstrate large scale system design and development processes. Plus there are useful asides, best practices and library recommendations galore.

Matthew specializes in Python development, especially in the areas of web security and performance. He has been developing Python web applications for 15 years and has been very active in the open-source community in general and the Plone community in particular.

Matthew began using Plone in 2004 when it was at version 2.0. He has worked on various aspects of the core Plone software and was on the Plone framework and security teams through the Plone 4 era. He led the security team for over four years, modernizing security team practices by instituting unit testing of fixes across all versions, cooperation with Red Hat and other downstream vendors, and a pre-announcement policy. He has also contributed to the security of Zope, Django CMS and Pyramid, including recently rewriting Pyramid’s CSRF protection. This all gives him a wider view of security as a process rather than just deep knowledge of one system.

Matthew served as the administrator for Plone's participation in Google Summer of Code for many years. He has also served on the Plone Foundation's Membership Committee and Board of Directors, and he was instrumental in helping to overcome the many legal and logistical hurdles to bringing Zope under the Plone Foundation's umbrella.

Matthew is a welcome and frequent presence at Plone conferences and sprints and has been known to be involved in adventures in late night drinking. For example after the party at the first Bristol conference, Matthew was instrumental in arranging for the pub where many Plonistas were hanging out to continue serving them after official closing time. The party continued until 5 in the morning and we learned later that the place took in £16,000 that night. Matthew also collaborated with David Glick on the classic zodb.ws April Fool’s Day launch in 2011 when they managed to get a hacked-up version of the ZODB running in the browser - a prank which required both technical chops and a particular sense of humor.

Congratulations to Matthew!