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.

EuroPython 2008 - Day 2

I took way too much coffee during breaks on Day 1, that kept me awake till 3AM, so it was a tough day. Nevertheless, today was better than Day 1. Let's see where I've been.

Designing Large-Scale Applications in Python by Marc-André Lemburg basically was a beginner oriented tutorial on how to do enterprisey stuff properly. It got more serious later on when he started mentioning concrete patterns and techniques. It's good that this conference has a (so so, but still) working WI-FI that kept me entertained till the next session. It's good to chew on some RSS feeds in the morning.



Then Steve Alexander from Canonical gave an inspiring talk on how they developed a very large python web application LEAN style. Launchpad to be exact. One of the greatest points was the use of pre-commit continuous integration, which ensures the developers that trunk is never broken. Also, he mentioned that canonical is hiring ~20 python developers (see their ad in my post about EuroPython 2008 Day 1).



Cool stuff with Jython by Frank Wierzbicki (from Sun) and Jim Baker was somehow boring and Jim's words "we write Java so you don't have to broke my heart, so I got back to reading RSS feeds". Frank was bragging about new hot NetBeans refactoring, which Eclipse has since.. uh.. forever? Read more on this topic in this great post. Dear pythonists, throw away your NetBeans CDs and visit eclipse.org instead.



There were a few Lightning Talks worth noticing.



Here's the full list.



I liked Jure Vrščaj's talk on Remote Module Importing where he showed us how to implement custom Python path resolvers that can seek modules from internet or source control repositories.



Mikhail Kashkin introduced a better style of Python programming - The Drunken Monkey style. Thumbs up for this one. :)



It was amazing to see how Holger Krekel unit-tested JavaScript with pytest.



Geoffrey French deserves a medal for his very alpha code editor gSym Prototype, which visualizes Python code with as AST and adds a Lisp View (with lots and lots of braces that all pythonists just love).



Here's a screenshot of gSym visualizing some mathematical functions.



Finally, a charismatic professor from Sweden, Hans Rosling, made a totally mind blowing keynote called "Code that make sense of the world". It can be basically rephrased as "Instead of letting people generate images from raw statistics in their head we should generate images in front of their heads".



It was one of the best talks I've seen in my life. This 60 year old professor knows people like Larry Page and Bill Gates, he knew Fidel Castro he's also good at GTA 2. Possibly this has something to do with Fidel Castro :).

Some more pictures from his talk...







Here's a great point on how data should be represented to the public.



And the following symptom that technical people tend to have made the audience laugh and applaud.



Most of what he presented can be seen in the following video. You HAVE to see it.



One day to go. See you tomorrow!

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...