djrobstep.com
I'm Robert Lechte, an idealistic software developer who wants more humanistic technology and a fairer society. I'm not actually a DJ, and not to be confused with Robert Lechte the swedish handball player.
My interest areas/hobby-horses:
User interfaces
I want to build radically different user interfaces, that remove the divide between users and programmers. I want development environments and operating systems that are instantaneous, interactive, and fully, pervasively programmable.
I want interfaces that don't constrain information artifically by trapping it within separate applications.
Democratic socialism
I want socialism and a classless society, and I think the best way to achieve that is by relentlessly pushing society's institutions to the left, rebuilding working class power through unions, and seizing all the capital into public ownership. PS bernie woulda won
Databases, particularly migration tools.
I'm building a radically different migration tool because I believe the existing tools suck. I'm also building a new service: CI for databases, to solve problems with database deployments. Register your interest.
Speaking publicly
I talk at conferences and meetups occasionally, my preferred topic is more humanistic software. I also talk about databases, and sometimes even politics.
| date | title | conference | location |
|---|---|---|---|
2019-08-04 |
Instant-feedback, instant-debugging Python coding | PyCon Australia | Sydney |
2018-01-25 |
Unions: Hacking society's operating system |
linux.conf.au |
Sydney |
2017-09-08 |
Your database migrations are bad, and you should feel bad | PostgresOpen |
San Francisco |
Open source projects
I'm the creator of several open source software projects.
| project | description | |
|---|---|---|
| migra | A schema comparison and migration tool for PostgreSQL |
|
| sqlakeyset | Multi-column, multi-direction offset-free paging library for sqlalchemy |
|
| logx | Zero-config best practice python logging |
|
| pgnotify | Easily listen and process PostgreSQL NOTIFY messages |
|
| autovenv | Automatic python version and virtualenv management |
|
| csvx | Better python csv file handling |
|
| sqlbag | Miscellaneous boilerplate for working with SQL databases |
If you use these projects and would like to support their continued development, you can sponsor me on GitHub.
Don't get mad, get results
I've also helped develop and release results, a toolkit to make it easier to work with databases and tabular data.
Recent posts
I don't write as much as I would like.
| published | title |
|---|---|
2020-02-15 |
A Python ORM for the ORM haters |
2020-01-21 |
Programs are a prison: Rethinking the fundamental building blocks of computing interfaces |
2019-12-01 |
Towards a convention for table ordering |
2019-11-28 |
Australia's super system is three trillion dollars of unused worker power |
2019-11-26 |
The missing clink: What US diners could teach Australian cafes (published in The Age/SMH) |
2019-03-05 |
Trust an Australian on this: A Job Guarantee is a terrible idea |
2019-03-03 |
Choose your examples carefully |
2017-04-27 |
Thinking clearly about the problems of an ageing population |
2017-04-23 |
The solution to the housing crisis is extremely simple |