Irish born software development director for a large multinational AEC company. Passionate about open source, particularly Python and getting young people interested about learning to code!
I also love music (jazz, acid jazz, film soundtracks, classical, blues, metal). On the side I shoot weddings with either my film or digital camera and enjoy movie nights with my wife and our 3 large dogs!
He/Him.
Published new article on Django 5.1's native connection pooling.
✅ No PgBouncer setup
✅ No third-party packages
✅ 10-30% faster database operations
✅ Works out-of-the-box
I think it’s perfect for cloud deployments where connection latency cost is real.
@wsvincent this was a great talk - it really painted the picture that from a web developers perspective you don’t need to be scared of AI or machine learning categorization to start dipping your toes into the water with scikit-learn and pandas.
Looking forward to your next “Django for AI” book :)
I think that there is a gap in the educational market for folks who would love that!
cheeky suggestion!
Friends!! I need your guidance!
My wife and I are thinking of moving house🏡…
But new house is just outside town. Everything is perfect - location, house… idyllic.
Except internet access!!!
There is no direct fiber to the house from either infrastructure provider in the area.
My only option is 5g modem (100mbps down, 10mbps up) or Starlink. 😭😭
My wife and I care deeply (try to in our actions) about the environment and one of the nice things about this house is the potential for net zero!!!
Consideration 1: I don’t like Elon Musk
Consideration 2: I don’t like Elon Musk
Consideration 3: it looks like Starlink will give the best Internet access but not sure how I feel about more space junk being shot into orbit!
So…
Should I just get over myself 🤔 and plonk down for Starlink for the better broadband (360mbps down , 60mbps up) with option in the next year to go to 1gbps. ???
Is that going to be enough for both wife and I simultaneously doing MS teams video calls??
Please help me self justify!!!😂😂
There were many many amazing talks at DjangoCon Europe 2025. #django #djangoconeu25 #djangoconeurope
@be_haki thank you again - I’ve rewatched this twice and shared with my team. Just when I thought that I knew Postgres, you took me right back to school! Wonderful. Love it!
Really encourage giving this one a watch!
@carlton i daily drive a MacBook Pro however like you, I wanted a windows/linux laptop with good battery for longer trips where I want good power per watt performance.
I really like the Thinkpad x13s. It uses the Qualcomm x elite processor (arm processor) so battery life is in Apple MacBook ball park. Performance is pretty great too.
If you’re not playing video games on it and willing to trade some legacy device driver support, windows on arm is very very useable.
It also has good Ubuntu support. Might meet your needs. :)
@_chrismay as somebody who really enjoyed your Djangocon talk on htmx in 2023, I was wondering if you’ll be doing a writeup on datastar on your blog and why you’re enjoying it more than htmx+alpine?! We’re loving Django template partials with htmx and alpine… it’s liberating for small teams.
Also listened to your recent Django chat podcast and understand your desire for streaming html … is the server sent events backbone of datastar your primary driver for datastar?
Keep up the great work. You’re write up on event sourcing was a lot of fun and something I’m considering exploring more with for an appropriate problem that we have :)
“In a gold rush, sell shovels “ feels like an apt quote as it relates to the current AI marketplace. AI has its place no doubt - I see the value for assistive programming tools (generating unit tests etc…) especially and no doubt it can provide another valuable learning aid.
However the fact remains that many organizations are receiving vastly bloated valuations that would humble the original .com bubble. Furthermore, I know of few organizations that are truly “selling shovels” and getting ROI from their significant spend in the AI space.
@djangochat @carlton and @wsvincent it was so lovely to meet you both at DjangoCon Europe (I’m the Irish Canadian guy who was chatting with you from Alberta :) ).
I wanted to thank you both again for your amazing thought provoking talks. More importantly thank you and the entire Django community for being so friendly, giving of your time to my silly questions.
@wsvincent your books have taught me Django and what an amazing resource they are. I bought the 4.0 version of the 3 and recently bought the Django 5 versions on your website too. I really like the improvements that went into the updated versions. Fantastic stuff.
@carlton I’m a huge fan of your button down newsletter of which I’m also a subscriber (highly recommend others to subscribe too).
Maybe next year I’ll drop a pair and prep a talk on our corporate journey with Django. Spoiler , it’s been fantastic.
In the mean time keep up the great work you guys on the chat podcast!
Wow! #Django 5.1 introduced connection pooling for #postgres. That's an extremely welcome addition! A few other really nice features were introduced, too. Great work!
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/5.1/releases/5.1/#postgresql-connection-pools
I wrote about Google's leaked 'AI mode' for search and the dwindling number of reasons to post anything for free on the web https://www.platformer.news/google-ai-mode-web-decline-design/
