The Mouse Vs. The Python

Now that I’ve covered the major stuff that I went to at PyCon 2009, I thought I should write a quick note about the other stuff I saw and did. I already mentioned going to the Open Space for Authors and Editors and the wxPython BoF, so I won’t rehash those here. (more…)

On Sunday, I went to the morning lightning talks a little late. None of them really jumped out at me as I was distracted by updating this blog and trying to update myself on other things. I’m sure I missed out on some good stuff, though. What I didn’t miss was the Reddit keynote. (more…)

From 4-5:15, Steve Holden held a Teach Me Web Testing Open Space session in which he set up his laptop and a projector, loaded his website, put some whiskey and vodka out on a table and then asked the crowd to teach him how to test his website using tools written in Python. (more…)

In the afternoon of the 2nd official day of PyCon 2009, I started off the talks with Ed Leafe’s Dabo talk on web applications using Dabo. He used a product that they have created called Springboard that kind of does a Google Gears type of interaction with the web. (more…)

I didn’t get a chance to write about what happened on Saturday at PyCon, so here’s a quick rundown of what I saw and did in the morning: I walked over to the Hyatt from Crowne Plaza with a researcher from Belgium. Then I attended the morning lightning talks and Guido’s keynote.

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On March 27th, 2009, we held a Birds of a Feather (BoF) meeting at PyCon 2009. I stuck it on the Open Space board and we had around 18 people show up with a couple that would drift in and out of the room. I think it was one of the high points for me because I go to meet others who use the wx framework. Christopher Barker was also there, and it was great to meet him. (more…)

The last talk I went to at PyCon on Friday (March 27), I went to Michael Foord’s talk, Functional Testing of Desktop Applications. He used IronPython examples in his demos from his book, IronPython in Action. His primary topic was on testing GUIs and the problems inherently involved thereof. (more…)

Steve Holden gave a talk on where Python is at Friday afternoon. For those not in the know, Holden is the current chairman of the Python Software Foundation (PSF). His first topic was about the PSF and how few member it had as well as how they were planning to add additional members at this PyCon. Holden spoke on who the Python community is, what noobs think of Python when they first start using it, Python conferences, development, PSF grants, the Python website and more.
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Jim Hugunin kicked off his talk, PyCon 2009 – IronPython: Data, Directions and Demos with mentioning his colleagues at Microsoft. He then went on to talk about the newest release of IronPython, which is 2.6 Alpha, which actually matches the Python 2.6 version as much as possible. It sounded like the recent version of IronPython 2.0 Final also has lots of cool stuff, like 500 bugs closed, more builtins and the ability to compile to a dll. (more…)

The How Pycon is Developed talk was given by Brett Cannon, a Python core developer. Brett spoke on how to start helping out with programming Python Core. To start off, he recommended learning the bug tracking system and how to use it, then start fixing bugs. To get started, go to news-bugs-announce or python-bugs-list. there you can submit bugs and learn about the current ones. As you become better known (through fixing bugs), the developers will give you additional privileges, with the highest one being commit privileges. (more…)