Steve Dower

Software Engineer, Python

Steve is an engineer who tells people about Python and then gives them excuses to use it and great tools to use it with. He is a core contributor and Windows expert for CPython, and works at Microsoft making sure Python developers are well supported across Windows, Azure, and other Microsoft platforms.

Post by this author

How to deal with the pain of “unable to find vcvarsall.bat”

Python's packaging ecosystem is one of its biggest strengths, but Windows users are often frustrated by packages that do not install properly. One of the most common errors you'll see is this one: (image) As far as errors go, "unable to find vcvarsall.bat" is not the most helpful. What is this mythical batch file? Why do I need it? Where ...

PyCaribbean 2016

Last week I attended the first ever PyCaribbean conference, organised by the local community and held in Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic. Conferences like PyCaribbean are an opportunity for Python developers and enthusiasts to come together and meet, network, discuss, and generally enjoy being part of a global ...

Talking with Python: Fabrikam Pizza Shack

Today, we're going to start the next multi-million-dollar pizza chain. You might think that the first thing we need to make pizza is a pizza oven and the ability to make toast without burning it, but who ever became a millionaire by following the "conventional" approach? Instead, we're going to start with the ordering system. The days when ...

Welcome to the Python Engineering blog

Welcome! We here on the Python team at Microsoft are starting a blog. And since this is the first post, we wanted to give a bit of an introduction of who we are, what we do, and what this blog is for. Microsoft has a Python team? Yes, we do! We are part of the Data Group in Azure, the same group that brings you SQL Server, Azure ML Studio ...