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

Watching 10 hours of video tutorials makes you a viewer, not a coder.
Most developers stay in "Passive Consumption" mode because it feels safe. You watch an instructor set up a pytest environment or configure a Docker container and think, "I get it." (28 Jan 2026) - link
Errors should not pass silently, so stop hiding them.
In Week 2 of our Pybites dev Rust cohort, we're tackling one of Rust's most powerful features: explicit error handling.

Here's the mental shift that changes everything: (28 Jan 2026) - link
Can you spot the bug? 🐛
You’ve finally moved your logic into a proper src/ layout so you can structure your pytest tests properly. (27 Jan 2026) - link

Follow me »

Reliable CI Benchmarks with pytest-codspeed: Traditional CI benchmarks are noisy (10-30% variance) because they measure wall-clock time. CodSpeed uses CPU instruction simulation instead, giving you <1% variance—so you can actually trust the results. ... (28 Jan 2026) - link
Convert any Jupyter notebook to Markdown (fast): If you want to extract a notebook into a clean, shareable text format (great for READMEs, docs, or blog drafts), convert `.ipynb` → Markdown with MyST: ... (28 Jan 2026) - link
Create GitHub issues faster from the CLI: Combine `gh`, `fzf`, and your `$EDITOR` to create issues without leaving the terminal: ... (27 Jan 2026) - link
PyPI Trusted Publishing - No More API Tokens: PyPI now supports trusted publishing via OpenID Connect (OIDC). Instead of managing API tokens, you let PyPI verify requests came from your GitHub Actions workflow directly. ... (26 Jan 2026) - link
Auto-discover documentation pages from markdown with YAML frontmatter: Skip the database for documentation. Drop markdown files in a folder, parse YAML frontmatter for metadata, and auto-discover them at runtime. ... (26 Jan 2026) - link

More Python tips »