Episode 65 – Regular expression mastery with Reuven Lerner

Regular expressions – those mysterious creatures we love to hate – now cower in a corner as you stand victorious! Here is your tale of regular expression mastery. Listen in!
Reuven’s Bio:
Reuven teaches Python and data science to companies around the world. He has written two eBooks, “Practice Makes Python” and “Practice Makes Regexp,” which contain 50 exercises to improve your fluency with Python and regular expressions, respectively. He also publishes “Weekly Python Exercise,” a subscription service that sends you a new Python exercise every week.
 
Listeners to the “Mentoring Developers” podcast can take 10% off any of these products with the “mentoring” coupon code. Just enter the coupon code at checkout!
 
Reuven also publishes three free weekly newsletters:

* Better developers (http://lerner.co.il/newsletter), with new programming tips every Monday
* Trainer Weekly (http://trainerweekly.com/), with new tips for professional trainers every Monday
* Mandarin Weekly (http://mandarinweekly.com/), for students of Mandarin Chinese — not related to computers, but a lot of fun!

 
Reuven lives in Modi’in, Israel (halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem) with his wife and three children.
You can contact and read more about Reuven at:

* Main site: http://lerner.co.il/
* Blog: http://blog.lerner.co.il/
* E-mail: reuven@lerner.co.il
* Twitter: @reuvenmlerner

Episode Highlights and Show Notes:
Arsalan: Hi, everyone. Today, my guest is Reuven Lerner. Reuven, how are you?
Reuven: I am doing great, Arsalan. It’s great to be back on the show.
Arsalan: It’s great to have you back. You were on the show in episode 13 and 36. So, if anyone wants to know who Reuven is and you want to learn more about what you have done and all the wonderful things because we went into so much detail, then listen to episodes 13, 14, and 36. Yet, I still want to know a little more. Tell us a little about your background, who you are, and what you’ve been doing.
Reuven: So, my background is a developer. I graduated with a degree in computer science and I started off programming for big companies. For more than 20 years, I’ve been a self-employed freelance developer with my own small company. It’s had its ups and downs in terms of the number of people. Right now it’s just me plus one other programmer who works with me on projects. Really, it’s mostly me doing a lot of, especially nowadays, training. Over the last 5 to 10 years, I’ve transferred from doing some development, some consulting, and some training. So, now it’s about 90% or more training. I go every day to a different company and teach their developers or non-developers how to program, usually in Python, or using some other related technologies.
Reuven: In addition to that, I do a few other things. I produce some newsletters that I put out. I have some books that I’ve published. I have a service that I recently launched. I’m a busy guy.
Arsalan: Clearly, you don’t have a family.
Reuven: I do have a family. I have a wife and three children who occasionally recognize who I am. No, they’re great. I’m actually speaking to you from a hotel, not because I run away from my family, but because I happen to be teaching a bit farther away from home in two places in northern Israel. So, rather than taking the train all the way back here, I’m just staying here for the evening. So, I have two newsletters that I put out every week. One is for people doing training to give them some tips on how to do training, whether it’s the pedagogic aspect to it like how to teach or have to learn, the business aspect, the logistic aspect like do you eat lunch with ...

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