I’m Michael Foord and I’m a Python trainer and contractor. I specialise in teaching Python and the end-to-end automated testing of systems. My passion is for simplicity and clarity in code, efficient lightweight processes and for well designed systems. As a Python core developer I wrote parts of unittest and created the mock library which became unittest.mock.

Recent customers include:

A fun excerpt from my most popular course, Advanced Python:

My favourite article, on software development and testing best practises:

Training

Most of my training is now delivered remotely, via Zoom or Teams, but I’m available for onsite training.

My most popular courses are:

I also teach:

Several one hour sessions, seven so far, on a range of Python topics from generators to the concurrency to testing with pytest are available on YouTube. :

My favourite presentation from PyLondinium 2019: The Python Object Model

Contact me

michael@python.org

Past Work

Highlights of the last few years.

To see my professional endorsements and more details of my career history, see my LinkedIn Profile.

Talks

A selection of some of the talks and interviews I’ve given on Python and software engineering across my career.

Testimonials

Truly a professional. Knowledgeable, prepared to answer any question from theory and/or experience. Funny, intuitive and very helpful in any technical way.

The course was very well planned out. Michael was a great teacher!

The course was great, lots of exercises to apply what you were learning. Very good course.

Deep technical background and hands-on experience could give good answers on all questions raised.

One of best trainings that I ever attended.

Technologies

Python, Advanced Python, C#, Go, Linux, docker, postgresql, SQL, MongoDB, git, unitttest, pytest, TDD, Django, SQLAlchemy, CI, Jenkins/Travis, devops, AWS, Scrum, Selenium, Flask, OOP, REST, APIs, async, threads, multiprocessing, OWASP, security.