Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Bank of America to rebuild tech stack with Python at core


By Vasudev Ram



Saw this via Twitter:

Python in banking is an abstract of a talk by Niall O'Connor at PyCon IE 2013.

This is an excerpt from that page:

[ How and Why Bank of America decided to rebuild its entire technology stack with Python at the core. What challenges we have faced and are facing. How the banks business is adapting to a more agile and test focused culture. What the future holds. ]

I did know, of course, that a lot of enterprises use Python (and have been doing so for a while), but this news about BOA rebuilding its tech stack with Python is interesting, if true ...

Speaking of banks, did you know the origin of the word? It comes from the word bench, because some of the first bankers used to conduct their business on benches in the Middle Ages. I had read that somewhere as a kid, and checked it now at the page about banks on Wikipedia.

Excerpt from that page:

[ Origin of the word

The word bank was borrowed in Middle English from Middle French banque, from Old Italian banca, from Old High German banc, bank "bench, counter". Benches were used as desks or exchange counters during the Renaissance by Florentine bankers, who used to make their transactions atop desks covered by green tablecloths.[7]

One of the oldest items found showing money-changing activity is a silver Greek drachm coin from ancient Hellenic colony Trapezus on the Black Sea, modern Trabzon, c. 350–325 BC, presented in the British Museum in London. The coin shows a banker's table (trapeza) laden with coins, a pun on the name of the city. In fact, even today in Modern Greek the word Trapeza (Τράπεζα) means both a table and a bank. ]


- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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4 comments:

Unknown said...

We are not beginning to do this. It has happened :-)

Some legacy systems live outside of our python stack but are being transferred in one by one.

Hope this clears it up. And thanks for the blog.

Niall

Vasudev Ram said...

You're welcome, and thanks for the input.

Anonymous said...

And when that banker did not manage his business well, his was marked by the phrase "banca rotta" (broken bench), which is the foundation of our bankruptcy.

Vasudev Ram said...

@matej: Cool.