Bob Belderbos bbelderbos

Hi there, I'm Bob 👋

🐍 Python software developer & coach
🧠 Co-Founder of Pybites – practical, project-driven Python training
📚 I love books / reading, yet my focus is shipping real projects, not just consuming more tutorials.

PDI – Beginner Coaching: 1:1 support for people taking their first serious steps into Python.
PDC – Project / Cohort Coaching: Guided, project-based cohorts where you ship real apps and learn modern dev practices. Beginner and intermediate Python, in progress: Rust, Agentic AI, and Django.
PDM – Professional Developer Mindset: Flagship 1:1 intermediate / advanced program: mentoring, systems, and feedback to grow into a trusted senior developer.
Pybites Platform: 400+ hands-on Python exercises that teach idiomatic, tested code with instant feedback.
Rust for Python Devs:
- Writing at rsbit.es about Rust from a Pythonista’s perspective.
- Building rustplatform.com with practical Rust exercises and step up to project building in our upcoming Rust cohort coaching program.
Talk Python “100 Days of Code” courses: Co-created two 100 Days of Code courses with Talk Python (Python and Web dev) to help people level up through daily practice.
Pybites Books: Django-powered, clutter-free reading tracker to log books, mark favourites, and share what you’re reading — built to inspire reading and help kids (and adults) spend less time on screens.

Started in support & finance, automating my work with Excel + VBA macros.
Saw a painful problem: tons of telemetry bundles, no tool to analyse them.
Built a scrappy PHP app that processed thousands of bundles for hundreds of engineers.
That project put me on the map: I was pulled into automation work and finally became a full-time developer.

No CS degree — just JIT learning, persistence, and a lot of increasingly complex projects building up real-world experience. 💡

Now I help others escape tutorial hell, ship things, and build careers around it. 🚀

Escaping tutorial paralysis and designing a project roadmap
Writing clean, tested, idiomatic Python – and sharing what I’m learning as I dive deeper into Rust and other languages
Building CLIs, web apps, and automations that actually get used
Levelling up from “coder” to trusted engineer / senior dev
Creating systems for consistent learning: exercises, reading, and reflection
Turning your editor (especially Vim) and terminal into real productivity multipliers –
Supercharge Your Vim Workflow · 9 Command Line Tips Every Developer Should Know

I was reading Kobzol’s excellent article “Writing #Python like it’s #Rust”, and it perfectly captures how Rust can upgrade the way you write Python. 💡
Here are some takeaways I keep coming back to: (01 Dec 2025) - link
From ~9 seconds to ~0.1 seconds… just by changing the data structure.
In a recent @Pybites code ensemble session we tackled an Advent of Code puzzle where you repeatedly “react” a polymer string by removing adjacent units like aA / Bb. (30 Nov 2025) - link
From messy to clean numbers with `removeprefix` / `removesuffix`
With removeprefix("$") and removesuffix(suffix) you strip only what you expect to be there, then float(cap) * multiplier does the rest.

Classic EAFP: try to parse, fall back to 0.0 when the data is junk. (29 Nov 2025) - link

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power of the right data structure: stacks: From ~9 seconds to ~0.1 seconds… just by changing the data structure. ... (26 Nov 2025) - link
Logging memory usage: Cool debugging trick I picked up from: ... (20 Nov 2025) - link
find dependency dependencies: I needed to see which packages were pulling in six. ... (20 Nov 2025) - link
from messy to clean numbers with `removeprefix` / `removesuffix`: With `removeprefix("$")` and `removesuffix(suffix)` you strip only what you *expect* to be there, then `float(cap) * multiplier` does the rest. Classic EAFP: try to parse, fall back to `0.0` when the data is junk. ... (20 Nov 2025) - link
Priority queues made simple with heapq: Need to schedule tasks by urgency or priority? ... (16 Oct 2025) - link

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