You can't talk about without talking about their brilliantly weird podcast thing where they can generate a podcast about the um about whatever content you've thrown in there. So I like doing things like um I fed in a a big boring report about some like generative AI study and I told them, "You are banana slugs and I want you to have a conversation about this paper from the perspective of banana slugs talking about how this could affect your slug society." And they did it. It's like a Monty Python skit right there. I like it. Oh my god.

Welcome to episode 6 of Accessibility and Gen AI, a podcast that interviews the newsmakers and thought leaders in the world of accessibility and artificial intelligence. I'm Joe Devin, and I'm joined by my co-host, Eamonn Mackerlain. And today, we are interviewing Simon Willison, a true OG of the web. He created my favorite framework called Django. He created Lanyard, Datasette, and now he is a prolific blogger talking about and building projects on top of AI on a daily basis. Simon has contributed so much to the world we live in, and it is a true pleasure to have him join us today. Simon, welcome to the pod.

Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here.

You know, when I think about all the things that you've done, your impact on the web spans so many influential projects. But I'd love to understand what has been the most meaningful to you personally and what does a typical day look like for you?

So, I think the the most impactful project I've worked on is still Django. Like, Django has it's extraordinary how far that framework's gone. You know, NASA have used it. Instagram and Pinterest were built on top of it. Um It uh uh Meta's Threads is just another Django application, I found out recently. Um so that's amazing. And I love the fact that Django can be classified now as boring technology and that it's the safe choice. Right? If you just want to build something on the web, if you pick Django, you're not going to run into any sharp edges, there won't be any surprises. I'm really proud that it's made it to that point. Um but these days, um I'm really excited about the more recent stuff I'm working on and working on open source tools for data journalism where the dream here is I want the tools that I'm building to help somebody win a Pulitzer prize in investigative reporting.

And that sounds wildly ambitious and I think it is, it's ambitious but that would be such a cool sort of um example of the kinds of problems I want to solve. Like I build tools for other people and I want those other people to achieve sort of world-changing results with them.

That is so cool. Uh and and I'm just going to tell you an anecdote which I I have not mentioned to you before when we met. I I had never touched Python and I needed to deliver an e-commerce project for a client and I learned Python, Django, built the app in 2 weeks. And my client was so happy, she was like, because it, you know, it had that admin that that you guys put in there. And my client was like, "You should sell this whole admin thing." And I was just laughing so loud because this was a 2-week project for me.

That is so thrilling. And I I've heard a lot of that. A lot of people got their start in programming learning Django. And when we built Django, we never dreamed it would be a beginner's project. We thought it was like, you know, for advan- for experienced engineers to to quickly build web applications. But since then, there's the Django Girls tutorials that have been running for I think nearly a decade now. There's been so much activity on that front. And yeah, I I meet people and they're like, "Oh, Django was my introduction to programming and web development." And that that's so exciting. That, you know, that wasn't the plan, but so thrilling to see that happening.

Yeah. Though to be fair, I did start with PHP and MySQL before, but um That was my That was my intro to Python. It was really hard to get Python working, but Django part of it