Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Pycon highlights

9 views
Skip to first unread message

Sarah Clements

unread,
May 8, 2019, 3:43:54 PM5/8/19
to to...@lists.mozilla.org
For those not in CIA! :)

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Sarah Clements <scle...@mozilla.com>
Date: Wed, May 8, 2019 at 11:50 AM
Subject: Pycon highlights
To: <jmaher-...@mozilla.com>, Dave Hunt <dh...@mozilla.com>, Ionut
Goldan <igo...@mozilla.com>, Joel Maher <jma...@mozilla.com>


Hi all,


I'm back from Pycon! It was exhausting but I had a great time and found
people to be quite friendly and approachable. I ran into George Hickman -
the contractor who worked on part of the failure suggestions/classification
project last year (he's looking for work btw)! He introduced me to several
people he had met at previous Pycons and gave great advice about utilizing
the “hallway track” (basically chatting with people) instead of focusing
solely on attending talks since they’re all recorded:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxs2IIVXaEHHA4BtTiWZ2mQ/playlists

A few Highlights

-

Generator expressions and functions are cool! Great way to save memory
by eliminating lists that are essentially throw-aways; multiple generator
expressions can be “piped” into one another.
-

Dataclasses - introduced in Python 3.7.3 - are a great way of reducing
dunder (double underscore) method boilerplate for classes that are
essentially a collection of fields
-

Decorators look like higher order functions but with prettier syntax, ex:

`@my_fancy_decorator(thing)

Def a_function:

// does something`

Versus

`a_func = my_fancy_decorator(thing)(a_func)`

-

PEP 572 - Named Expressions aka the “walrus operator” - is the pep that
broke the BDFL’s (Benevolent Dictator for Life) back. This
soon-to-be-released pep apparently caused a lot of drama but it seems
pretty useful and you can read more about it here (
https://medium.com/hultner/try-out-walrus-operator-in-python-3-8-d030ce0ce601
)
-

With Guido stepping down as BDFL, a new governance model was voted upon
by the core team - the Steering Committee model. A committee of five per
release is elected by core contributors and is on equal footing with the
core team. Guido is on the first committee; he's still president of the
Python Software Foundation.
-

Library maintainers would find the talk by Jesse Jiryu Davis very useful
(API Deprecation the Right Way) - you can find a longer version in article
form here: https://emptysqua.re/blog/api-evolution-the-right-way/
-

There was a really interesting talk by a startup that uses Python to
process data captured from sensors attached to airplanes that fly over oil
and gas fields in order to detect methane leaks.
-

The opening keynote had a strong call-to-action about keeping Python
relevant for the next 10 years. The speaker also called out the current
FOSS model/assumption of core volunteers spending their free, unpaid time
on projects (instead we should be throwing money at them - especially
companies with resources - and establish an R&D model like other industries
do). I recommend watching (speech starts 20:42):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftP5BQh1-YM&list=PLPbTDk1hBo3xvStrNcDZRUre1yqS4q3jl&index=2


If anyone has the opportunity to go next year, I'd highly recommend it!

- Sarah
0 new messages