David Grudl

I invent software that powers many websites you use every day. I popularize and teach how to use artificial intelligence. I am speaker, trainer and writer.

I write software, blogs, and engage in various other creative endeavors. I have created a number of popular open-source projects (Nette Framework, Latte, Tracy, Texy, and many more). I started programming in the DOS era, later dabbled in graphics and even typeset newspapers, and nowadays, I focus on web applications in PHP & JavaScript and artificial intelligence.

I write the blog La Trine, which earned me a nomination for the Magnesia Litera award, the professional blog phpFashion, I train web application development and using ChatGPT, and I run Spartan Races or marathons.

Follow me on Facebook, Twitter as @davidgrudl and @geekovo or on Mastodon.

I want to know much more »

Really want to know more? Alright. I was born in Břeclav during the socialist era. I took my first programming steps on a Slušovice computer TNS. I graduated from high school, where I became so popular that the teachers celebrated my departure with a grand party. Then I moved to the big city for studies. To Brno. I occasionally worked as a graphic designer in an advertising agency and typeset the Břeclavsko newspaper.

In 1999, I founded a company selling wireless modems and also became interested in web design, as I was too frugal to pay a student 15,000 for creating an e-shop. Creating websites and web applications gradually became my main interest.

In 2004, La Trine, a purely professional blog with a vast majority of non-professional articles, was born. Originally on the domain dgx.cz, which I sold in 2008 for an outrageous sum to the new owner along with the blog. Blogging was supposed to teach me to write better, which didn't happen, yet La Trine was among the most-read Czech blogs and even earned a nomination for the Magnesia Litera award. It taught me to endure critical and offensive comments from passing anonymous people.

In early 2005, I released my first open-source work, Texy!, a library that makes writing and formatting texts for the web easier. The library became popular and is used by a vast number of websites, ranging from blogs to complex e-shops like Mall.cz. A year later, I published the database layer Dibi, which also met with favor among programmers. Another year later, my biggest project to date, Nette Framework, came along.

Unlike previous libraries, Nette Framework became popular even before anyone saw it. I officially presented it at the PHP frameworks autumn 2007 conference, and a few months later, I published it. Today, it ranks among the most used PHP frameworks here, with many multinational companies among its references. I list public Nette Framework training. A strong community of programmers has formed around the framework, meeting regularly every month at so-called Posobota.

In 2008, I figured out how Twitter works, reduced blogging, and started tweeting as @DavidGrudl. During the Microsoft BUILD 2011 conference, I also created a separate account @geekovo for computer matters, so as not to bother decent people with them.

In 2010, I moved to Prague and created the website for the President of the Republic Václav Klaus, which runs on the Nette Framework. Throughout its existence, it has operated without any hitches, only crashing under the unexpected weight of interest on January 1, when the president announced amnesty on TV without consulting his web designer first.

In 2013, at the WebExpo conference afterparty, I tried stand-up for the first time, that is, standing up with a microphone in front of people and entertaining them. It turned out to be orders of magnitude easier than preparing professional lectures, as you just need to talk nonsense and don't even have to prepare slides. Despite this discovery, I still hold a kind of respect for stand-up comedians.

In 2016, for some reason, I thought it was a good idea to participate in the crazy Spartan Race events, where people wade through mud, overcome obstacles, and do countless push-ups, and I started training. A year later, during the 27-kilometer Spartan Race Beast on the slopes around Ještěd, I had plenty of time to reconsider this idea.

A huge challenge and joy was collaborating on the crowdfunding campaign Hope for Nina, which raised money for the treatment of a girl suffering from spinal muscular atrophy. We made it!.

They say that the fortieth year of a man's life is marked by 3M (motorcycle, marathon, mistress). They say it correctly.

As if crowdfunding campaigns weren't enough, I launched one in 2018 to support the development of Nette Framework.

In 2021, I got excited about artificial intelligence, which has brought a fresh breeze into the field of computer science after many years of complete boredom. I started exploring how to integrate the then GPT into everyday life. And today, I enthusiastically teach others.

Since 2022, I've been hosting a weekly show TECH GUYS, where we discuss the latest tech news in a light-hearted manner.

Photo for download

Software

Nette Framework

Nette Framework

A popular tool for creating web applications in PHP. Powerful and understandable tool that satisfies the programmers. It eliminates security risks, honors for AJAX, DRY, KISS, MVC and code reuse.

Latte

Latte

Latte is the only truly secure templating system for PHP with an amazingly intuitive syntax.

Tracy

Tracy

Tracy is a highly addictive PHP debugger that is a joy to find bugs with.

dibi

dibi

Dibi is a smart and tiny database abstraction library for PHP 5 with very handy API.

Texy

Texy!

Texy is text-to-HTML formatter. It allows you to write structured documents using easy-to-read plain text.

NEON

NEON

NEON is a human friendly data serialization format for programming languages, similar to YAML.

…and dozens of other projects

Check out the dg and Nette repositories on GitHub.

Instagram DavidGrudl

Blog

La Trine RSS FEED

phpFashion RSS FEED

Interviews

Talks RSS FEED

Contact

Address

David Grudl
Korunní 2569/108
101 00 Praha

The Czech Republic

E-mail