RFC: Pyramid tutorial at PyCon

[Paul Everitt]

tl;dr Should I submit a slightly different kind of PyCon tutorial proposal?

Although this isn't necessarily the target audience, I thought I'd open it up for discussion here. At the last two PyCons I did a half-day intro to Pyramid under Python 3 tutorial. In fact, I pitched at those interested in web development under Python 3 first, with Pyramid along for the ride.

The signup numbers were good the first year, then lower last year. I am thinking about adding something to attract interest.

Lately I've been doing a lot of frontend development: AngularJS talking to a REST API in Pyramid. Which also means the modern frontend toolchain: npm, bower, grunt/gulp, with Karma/Protractor for testing. Do you think I should submit a tutorial proposal that is frontend+REST in nature?

###

As an aside, once I get caught up, I'm going to start an RFC here about the tutorial in the docs.

--Paul

[Paul Winkler]

Personally I think that's a nice idea, although there are so many different frontend toolkits, so it's hard to pick one that will attract the most people...

fwiw, Backbone seems to be nearly ubiquitous here in NYC at the moment; I've had 3 jobs since 2012 and they all used Backbone. I have certainly heard of people around here using Angular but haven't actually come across it yet.

Which is a long way of saying, could you find a way to keep the focus on the Pyramid side of things? Nice patterns, libraries, and dev processes for building backend APIs with Pyramid? What makes Pyramid particularly good for this?

--Paul

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[Paul Everitt]

On Sep 4, 2014, at 7:35 AM, Paul Winkler <sli...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Personally I think that's a nice idea, although there are so many different frontend toolkits, so it's hard to pick one that will attract the most people...

Indeed. But it's kind of a self-selection thing. If I'm teaching the tutorial, it will be the things I'm qualified to teach. Which isn't Backbone. :) The hope is that, the patterns of frontend-oriented development, and the accompanying toolchain, is more important than this month's flavour du jour on JS MVC.

> fwiw, Backbone seems to be nearly ubiquitous here in NYC at the moment; I've had 3 jobs since 2012 and they all used Backbone. I have certainly heard of people around here using Angular but haven't actually come across it yet.

> Which is a long way of saying, could you find a way to keep the focus on the Pyramid side of things? Nice patterns, libraries, and dev processes for building backend APIs with Pyramid? What makes Pyramid particularly good for this?

I could, but that puts me back in the same place as last year. My Pyramid-focused tutorial was in the bottom third of attendance. The top of that third, but still, not attracting broad interest. I'm trying to find something topical to piggy-back on.

--Paul

[Steve Piercy]

Thanks for taking the lead and initiative on this.

I just paid for my PyCon registration, and I will be there for
tutorials through sprints.

I will also volunteer for pre-tutorial setup. Environment setup
has been a problem. I think that there should be pre-requisites:

* have previous web application development experience in any
programming language
* installed the latest Python 3
* created a venv
* installed Pyramid into the venv
* created a "Hello World" Pyramid app

The last 4 items are documented.
http://trypyramid.com/


On 9/4/14 at 6:35 AM, paulwe...@gmail.com (Paul Everitt) pronounced:

>Although this isn't necessarily the target audience, I thought
>I'd open it up for discussion here. At the last two PyCons I
>did a half-day intro to Pyramid under Python 3 tutorial. In
>fact, I pitched at those interested in web development under
>Python 3 first, with Pyramid along for the ride.
>
>The signup numbers were good the first year, then lower last
>year. I am thinking about adding something to attract interest.

IIRC, the previous two years were targeted toward beginners or "non-experts".

When I do meetups and lead tutorials on getting started with
Pyramid, only about 10% of the users have Python 3 already
installed. I think that putting Python 3 in last year's pitch
brought down the number of signups.

>Lately I've been doing a lot of frontend development: AngularJS
>talking to a REST API in Pyramid. Which also means the modern
>frontend toolchain: npm, bower, grunt/gulp, with
>Karma/Protractor for testing. Do you think I should submit a
>tutorial proposal that is frontend+REST in nature?

I think this would be more attractive than Python 3. It has
that "Whoa! How'd you do that?" potential. I like to see how
other people go through their workflow when developing web apps.

--steve

>###
>
>As an aside, once I get caught up, I'm going to start an RFC
>here about the tutorial in the docs.
>
>--Paul
>

------------------------
Steve Piercy, Soquel, CA

[Jonathan Vanasco]

On Thursday, September 4, 2014 6:35:36 AM UTC-4, Paul Everitt wrote:

Lately I've been doing a lot of frontend development: AngularJS talking to a REST API in Pyramid. Which also means the modern frontend toolchain: npm, bower, grunt/gulp, with Karma/Protractor for testing. Do you think I should submit a tutorial proposal that is frontend+REST in nature?

I definitely think you should not pitch this as a "Pyramid tutorial" but instead as a teardown/howto for a specific type of app using Pyramid.

"Learn how to make a pyramid app" sounds a lot less enticing than something like "See how Pyramid enables rapid development of modern JS+Rest applications with full integrated testing and build processes".  I think the Falcon project had some really compelling presentations where they focused on the ease of development and speed of execution for REST APIs.

[Jonathan Vanasco]

A better way to state what I meant to say: I think the more attractive proposals offer a few things:

• They're not just concerned with HOW to use something, but WHY people should use it
• They show people how to do something the "right" way or a "better" way than they currently handle

• They garner interest because the topics resonate with issue(s) that people routinely face

"Learning Pyramid" is only interesting to people who are somewhat interested in Pyramid.  But "Leveraging Pyramid in REST APIs for streamlined deployment and testing"  (or whatever) is super interesting to anyone who deals with REST APIs.

So I definitely think your approach is valid and likely to get more interest.

[Wichert Akkerman]

On 04 Sep 2014, at 12:35, Paul Everitt <paulwe...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> tl;dr Should I submit a slightly different kind of PyCon tutorial proposal?
>
> Although this isn't necessarily the target audience, I thought I'd open it up for discussion here. At the last two PyCons I did a half-day intro to Pyramid under Python 3 tutorial. In fact, I pitched at those interested in web development under Python 3 first, with Pyramid along for the ride.
>
> The signup numbers were good the first year, then lower last year. I am thinking about adding something to attract interest.
>
> Lately I've been doing a lot of frontend development: AngularJS talking to a REST API in Pyramid. Which also means the modern frontend toolchain: npm, bower, grunt/gulp, with Karma/Protractor for testing. Do you think I should submit a tutorial proposal that is frontend+REST in nature?

I like this plan :)

Wichert.

[Paul Everitt]

I decided not to do a tutorial. I'm bringing my son to Young Coders and tutorials are two (possibly three) days earlier. Can't have him out of school that long.

If anybody else wants to give the tutorial, I can help them use the material.

--Paul

[Steve Piercy]

If someone takes the lead on a Pyramid tutorial at PyCon, I will
gladly be a teacher's assistant.

--steve


On 9/10/14 at 4:22 PM, paulwe...@gmail.com (Paul Everitt) pronounced:

[Chris Rossi]

Maybe a series of blog posts?  I think some good info about at least one version of a front end development stack with Pyramid integrated would be a good thing to have in general.

Chris