Dave Beazley

David Beazley is the author of the Python Essential Reference and has been an active member of the Python community since 1996. He is most widely known for creating several Python-related open-source packages, including SWIG (a tool for building C/C++ extension modules to Python) and PLY (a Python version of the lex/yacc parsing tools). In the 1990s, while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he helped pioneer the use of Python on massively parallel supercomputers. From 1998 to 2005, he was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, where he taught courses on operating systems, networks, and compilers. Dave is currently the owner of Dabeaz LLC, a company specializing in Python software development and training courses.