EuroPython 2008 - Day 3

The third and final day of EuroPython 2008 started with a little bit of rocket science by Michael Meinel from German Aerospace Center. He talked about FlowSimulator, which is a Python-controlled framework to unify massive parallel CFD workflows. Interesting point was that they used SWIG to allow Python to control code written in C/C++, so basically Python was a glue code.



Second talk I attended was called "Small team, big demands? - Use the batteries included" by Jussi Rasinmäki. It was a tale of a software project which started with C, failed miserably and finally ended with Python. The outcome was twice as fast as C code with tenfold smaller code base. C can be slow if your code is really really bad.



I went there for the "Batteries Included" line, which really was as simple as this:



There was one thing that I believe you should avoid in your code, and hell, in public presentations too. I mean a function named Age_pine_hemib_h_KalliovirtaTokola. Seriously, WTF?



Next, Raymond D. Hettinger gave a good talk on "Core Python Containers - Under The Hood". Well, before that he managed to amuse the audience with the usual behavior of Windows in his laptop. Why the hell anyone would use Windows here anyway?



However, Raymond revealed some useful Python internals and told us how to make optimal use of the collections.



Here's the moral of his story:



Last talk I've attended in this year's EuroPython was called "Functional Programming with Python, or Why It's Good To Be Lazy?" by Adam Byrtek. It was a great talk that covered the concept of functional programming, which went down to Pythonic functional programming features - map/filter/reduce and lambda functions.



Sadly I had some errands to run, so I couldn't make it to the Lightning Talks...



Hopefully I'll see you all in EuroPython 2009, which is going to be held in Birmingham UK.