A lot of beginner tutorials start with “Hello World” examples. There are plenty of websites that use a calculator application as a kind of “Hello World” for GUI beginners. Calculators are a good way to learn because they have a set of widgets that you need to lay out in an orderly fashion. They also require a certain amount of logic to make them work correctly. For this calculator, let’s focus on being able to do the following:
My latest book, Create GUI Applications with wxPython, is coming along nicely. I just wanted to let my readership know that the Kickstarter for it is coming to a close in a little less than 2 days.
If you’d like to get a copy at a cheaper price than it will be when it is released in May later this year, the Kickstarter is really the way to go. You can check out the current table of contents in this post from last week.
This week we welcome Paolo Melchiorre (@pauloxnet)as our PyDev of the Week! Paolo is a core developer of the Django web framework. He has spoken at several different Python-related conferences in Europe and also writes over on his blog. Let’s take a few minutes to get to know him better!
Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc)?
I graduated with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Bologna. My thesis was about Free Software and since then I’ve been a Free Software advocate.
I’ve been a GNU/Linux user for 20 years and now I’m a happy user of Ubuntu.
In 2007 I attended my first conference, the Plone Conference, and since then I’ve attended many other pythonic conferences in Europe.
In 2017 I presented a talk at PyCon Italy and at EuroPython and since then I have been a conference speaker for local and international events, both in Italian and in English.
Giving a talk at EuroPython 2017
I’ve lived and worked in Rome and London, and since 2015 I’ve been a remote worker located in my hometown of Pescara in Italy, which is close to the beach and the mountains.
I love nature and spending my time swimming, snowboarding or hiking, but also traveling with my wife around the world.
I like improving my English skills by reading fiction books or listening to audiobooks, watching TV series and movies, listening to podcasts and attending local English speaking meetups.
JupyterLab is the latest package from Project Jupyter. In some ways, it is kind of a replacement for Jupyter Notebook. However the Jupyter Notebook is a separate project from JupyterLab. I like to think of JupyterLab as a kind of web-based Integrated Development Environment that you an use to to work with Jupyter Notebooks as well as using terminals, text editors and code consoles. You might say JupyterLab is a more powerful version of Jupyter Notebook.
Anyway, here are a few of the things that JupyterLab is capable of:
Code Consoles – These are coding scratchpads that you can use for running code interactively, kind of like Python’s IDLE
Kernel-backed documents – These allow you to enable code in any text file (Markdown, Python, R, etc) that can then be run in the Jupyter kernel
Mirrored Notebook cell outputs – This let’s you create simple dashboards
Multiple views of the same document – Gives you the ability to live edit documents and see the results in real-time
JupyterLab will allow you to view and handle multiple types of data. You can also display rich output from these formats using various visualizations or Markdown.
For navigation, you can use customizable keyboard shortcuts or key maps from vim, emacs and even SublimeText.
We are coming into the last week of the Kickstarter and I thought I would give you all a quick update. I finished writing up the chapter on creating a calculator today and got started on chapter 7.
I also wanted to let you know what the current table of contents looks like right now:
Chapter 1 – Intro to wxPython
Chapter 2 – Creating an Image Viewer
Chapter 3 – Enhancing the Image Viewer
Chapter 4 – Creating a Database Viewer
Chapter 5 – Database Editing with wxPython
Chapter 6 – Calculator
Chapter 7 – Archiver (tarball creation utility)
Chapter 8 – MP3 Tag Editor
Chapter 9 – XML Editor
Chapter 10 – NASA Image Downloader / Search Tool
Chapter 11 – PDF Merger / Splitter
There will also be a chapter on creating executables and installers for your application and a couple of appendixes.
This week we welcome Ali Spittel (@ASpittel) as our PyDev of the Week! Ali is a blogger and speaker and enjoys teaching about tech. You can see what code she’s been writing over on Github. Let’s take a few moments to get to know Ali better!
Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):
Hey! I’m Ali. I am a software engineer at DEV, an awesome community of programmers that I was a member of for a while before joining. Outside of work, I rock climb and hang out with my puppy, Blair. I’m also really involved in the DC tech community, which is incredible.
I’m mostly self-taught as far as programming goes — I was a government major at Hamilton College, but I took a few computer science classes and fell in love with it. Here we are! Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Ali Spittel→
The Python Regex book covers Regular Expressions in Python. While only 50 pages in length, it has lots of examples that you can use to learn all about using Regular Expressions in your own code. You can check out the Github repo and see what kind of code is in the book.
I am currently working on a new book entitled Creating GUI Applications with wxPython that you can support on Kickstarter. This is the current table of contents for the book:
Chapter 1 – Intro to wxPython
Chapter 2 – Creating an Image Viewer
Chapter 3 – Enhancing the Image Viewer
Chapter 4 – Creating a Database Viewer
Chapter 5 – Database Editing with wxPython
Chapter 6 – Calculator
Chapter 7 – Archiver (tarball creation utility)
Chapter 8 – MP3 Tag Editor
Chapter 9 – XML Editor
Chapter 10 – NASA Image Downloader / Search Tool
Chapter 11 – PDF Merger / Splitter
There will also be a chapter on creating executables and installers for your application and a couple of appendixes.
I am doing a second stretch goal to add up to 3 additional chapters to the book. Check out the Kickstarter for more information.
This week we welcome Lorena Mesa (@loooorenanicole) as our PyDev of the Week! Lorena is an organizer for the PyLadies Chicago group and a director at the Python Software Foundation. You can check out some of the things that she is up to on her blog or via her Github page. Let’s spend a few moments getting to know her better!
Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):
Hmmm … I have been told that I’m a bit eclectic. So let’s start with the basics, in my day to day gig I am a proud member of GitHub’s software intelligence systems team as a data engineer. In my etc hours I do such things as co-organize PyLadies Chicago and serve as a Director for the Python Software Foundation.
Things I do for fun?
I’m an avid runner having taken on the Chicago Marathon 13 times now. Why? I encourage you to read Haruki Murakami’s “What I talk about when I talk about running” before you ask me that.
Jazz, italo disco, and loud 1980s ballads are equal parts guilty pleasure for me. Meaning of course I’ve been learning the sax and getting pretty good at it lately. (Yes, I can play Careless Whispers).
