PyGrunn 2026 recap
We visited PyGrunn, a big Python conference in Groningen. It's always nice to learn from others, and to share knowledge. Here's a summary of some talks we visited.
Mike Huls spoke about layered architecture. For example, abstracting business logic from view classes, backend architecture from input validation. This makes sense, especially when apps grow. We recognize this in many projects: as time progresses and complexity increases, separation of concerns makes a project easier to maintain.
Kees Hink (that's me!) spoke about the Zed editor. It's fast, and it doesn't get in the way. Enough said.
Bart Dorlandt spoke about paperless-ngx, an Open Source document management system. Keeping track of mail from public offices (taxes etc.) can be hard. He now uses this for all professional mail he receives, helped by some scripts he created.
Also by Bart Dorlandt was a presentation about applying validation to a large legacy database that contained unvalidated JSON data. Applying rules gradually is a challenge most developers face when dealing with older codebases. This talk provided valuable insights.
Sven Vintges spoke about how the current progress in AI changes development. He argues it's a "homecoming": As developers, we can focus less on coding syntax, and more on translating the project domain to the coding domain. This was originally what programmers did, and it might allow us to focus on that, and get satisfaction from it.
Finally, the closing keynote by Gijs Molenaar illustrated how the music market was changed by Spotify. His parents owned a record store, and eventually had to stop. Similarly, the conventional way of programming is changed by AI.
Next year, PyGrunn will be combined with AIGrunn. Not a strange choice, as many of this day's talks were also about AI.
For more summaries, read Reinout van Rees' blog.
