EuroPython 2008 - Day 1

It's the end of first day of EuroPython 2008, a good time to overlook what I've seen.





Right after the keynote, which was short and uplifting, I've headed to the first session - Dynamic Compilation in Python and Jython by Tobias Ivarsson and Jim Baker. It was long and boring, but still inspiring. They looked into things like bytecode versus AST manipulation, introduced nice tools like pyassem. It's nice to see that Java and JVM is a hot topic in smart programmer communities. I consider Python community as one of the smartest people in software development.



Then I went to listen to my native speaker Ignas Mikalajūnas from Programmers of Vilnius. He told Why he Wants Us to Use Eggs. I would disagree with saying "Eggs are to Pythons as Jars are to Java...". It's more like "Eggs may some day be to Pythons as Maven is for Java". For now Eggs look scary and unstable especially with things like Known Good Set (compare it to Maven Repository). Though I would definitely want to use it for Python projects. Better than nothing.





Then I made a mistake by visiting John Pinner's "Python at Home" talk. He was going to tell how he automated his boiler at home with use of Python. I expected a lot from that, instead I've seen some photos of a boiler wired to a motherboard and some source code like "boiler.ignition(On)" and "boiler.ignition(Off)". I would recommend John (and all the other speakers) not to dig deep into source code but concentrate on big picture instead.



I didn't want to go to vendor pitch sessions or things that does not sound interesting (Advanced Searching for Plone and stuff), so my choice was the Barcamp / Open Space, where Tommi Virtanen was giving a talk on Twisted. If you want messaging in Python, do it in Twisted. The guy gave a great quote of Torvalds Linus, which sounded something like "If you have to use debugging - you already have problems. Take a step back and review what could be wrong". It definitely was a great session.



I was going to visit "Discouraging the Use of Python" next, but I was tired and didn't want to be discouraged, so I've headed home to write all this down.

Most of attendees I've spoken to admit that last year's EuroPython was way better than this. But well, two more days to go.

Now for some fun moments:
Canonical was hiring Django developers and senior engineers.



Until the epic failure of their campaign:



All pythonistas got a copy of NetBeans 6.1 and Open Solaris (go Sun! :)) along with geeky looking Bazaar T-Shirt.



And of course, loads of free coffee, snacks and socializing!






See You there at Day 2!

Update

Yesterday I forgot to mention that Guido Van Rossum did not participate in the conference like the last year. I did not participate in his video keynote either...