2025-10-31 –, Auditorium
In 2007, when Python 2.5 was new and the first iPhone hadn't yet reached Sweden, Pymunk was born! Now, 18 years later, it has officially come of age. This is the story about the 2D physics library Pymunk, told by its creator.
With Pymunk's creation and evolution as a backdrop, I will share my thoughts and insights into maintaining a mildly successful open source library long term. We will explore a history that includes PyWeek-winning games, 100+ research papers on everything from COVID-19 to moral philosophy and mypy bugs.
And don't worry, you don't need to know the GJK collision algorithm, or even Newton's laws of motion, to follow along!
Pymunk was created to easily let me write a game with 2D physics for the PyWeek 5 game competition. The game itself wasn't very successful, but Pymunk has since grown into an established library used in for example games, education and research, with 5 million total downloads and 1,000 stars on GitHub.
During Pymunk's 18 years many things have happened, and I plan to cover some of the more impactful and memorable of them. Partly key technical "happenings" (Python 2-to-3 anyone?), but the main focus will be on the less technical side of Pymunk's development.
This session is for anyone interested in open source, software longevity, or just a good story. No deep math or expert-level Python skills are required.
Victor is a Swedish System Architect at fintech MAJORITY by day, Python coder by night. 18 years ago, he wrote the first line of code for Pymunk, which has since become what he believes is the best library to use whenever you need to simulate 2D physics in Python.