Business Insider reports: Programmer Serhiy Storchaka is one of the main contributors to the popular programming language Python, and he and many others live in the Ukrainian tech community with a strong development atmosphere.
However, after the full-scale outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the majority of Ukrainian developers are at risk of being involved in the war. The latest news is that in order to save his family from danger, the resident developers of the surrounding Python Software Foundation have extended a strong helping hand through Google Translate.
Ukraine has a mature software development community, but many developers are also of the military service age. As a popular development language, Python is powering websites such as YouTube, Google Search, Facebook, and Amazon. Lukasz Langa, a residential development at the Poznan-based Python Software Foundation, told Business Insider:
People often ask why Eastern Europeans are so good at becoming, and we tend to give this answer – because the teachers are strict enough, and the winters here are quite long. Of course, there is a bit of a joke in this remark.
Closer to home, Python was created in the early 1990s and is currently an open-source project jointly maintained by the Foundation and the developer community. According to Lukasz Langa, Serhiy Storchaka, who lives in Ukraine, is the second most prolific contributor and is able to make it to tenth place on the list of all-time contributors.
After the war, Serhiy Storchaka and many young Ukrainian programmers chose to stay, such as Andrew Svetlov, another influential Python developer specializing in asynchronous network support.
It can be seen from a tweet posted on February 26 that he lives on the outskirts of the city of Konotop in northeastern Ukraine, which has been controlled by the Russian army – the tank is driving on the road only 2 kilometers away from his home, and the armored car is also seen from the window. As he drove by, he suddenly realized that he was in the occupation zone of the legal vacuum.
It was difficult for the media to get in touch with Serhiy Storchaka for a while until Lukasz Langa shared the latest details. It can be seen that they do not want to abandon their homes easily, even if it means they need to face huge risks.
As the situation worsened last Friday and weekend, the Python developer community started to join forces to help his niece and 11-year-old get a temporary home. Accompanied by their mother, they left the country by bus and went to Poland.
Lukasz Langa drove 300 kilometers to Warsaw to meet them and make sure they had enough necessities. Now their greatest wish is to hope that the conflict will not further intensify.