Pinax Developer Profiles: Greg Newman

This is a post in our Pinax Developer Profiles series, where we highlight awesome people who contribute to Pinax. Read more about it here.

Greg Newman is a hybrid developer, designer, and artist. He has been consulting since 2002.

Tell us about how your story with code started.

Unbeknownst to me, the seed was planted in the mid 80’s with basic on a Commodore 64. That didn’t last long and it would be another decade before I would get serious about it. It really started when my employer at the time tasked me with developing their company website and building databases for the sales team. After that I was hooked.

What do you love about programming?

As a kid, I was always fascinated about how things worked. I took apart and reassembled anything from digital radios to engines and often constructed new gadgets in the process. Programming is a lot like the adult version of that.

Why did you start contributing to Pinax and what do you like about Pinax?

I was making a transition from Rails to Django and the fastest way to accomplish that was contributing to open source software. This was during the early days of Pinax and I don’t remember how I found out about it at the time. I spent many early mornings, nights, and weekends learning and working with the Pinax team.

Tell us about a cool project you built with Pinax.

About six or seven years ago I built a medical research application with Pinax that consumed excel data and allowed doctors to update their data.

What’s a Pinax app/starter project you would like to build/you think is missing?

I have a need for a todo app that mimics my notebook. (As if we need another todo app). I have the core figured out in my head, I just need to work on it.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I’m also a working artist so I can be found in my studio. I read a lot. I’m also a motorcycle nut so I spend a lot of free time riding my Harley or tooling around in the garage.

Do you have any tips for new Pinax contributors?

Contributing to open source can be intimidating for a lot of people but it shouldn’t be. The Django community as a whole is fantastic and the Pinax team is no exception. Just dive in and submit pull requests. Learn from the feedback you get. You probably have great ideas that need to be brought to the table.

Thanks Greg! :)

If you contribute to Pinax, we’d love for you to do an interview for our Pinax Developer Profiles interview series so the Pinax community can get to know you. You can submit your interview by filling out this form. If you’d like to nominate someone who we should interview, please send an email to Anna Ossowski. Our Pinax community manager, Anna Ossowski, will be happy to reach out to them. Please don’t be shy! You are awesome and we’d love to find out more about you!