Minneapolis PyStar 4 (After Action Report)
Gregg Lind
=============================================
author: Gregg Lind (and any errors are entirely his!)
(Yes, this is ridiculously late, but it has some good stuff)!
* PyStar 4 was on Dec 17, 2011, at Clockwork (who are still awesome)
* we had (about 15) learners and 5 guides.
* engagement was very good, and we think that our initial exercise of
"Human Computer"
was a big part of it (see below)
Requests for modules:
* 'find the exceptions'
* something having to do with csv / excel
* find duplicate images/files/mp3s.
* get songs for my albums
Specifics:
* Human Computer was AWESOME:
http://69.164.205.89/~gregg/book/build/html/humancomputer_fizzbuzz.html
(idea by vaughns and GL). We didn't touch code until 11:30, but
once we did, the questions were
REALLY good. People had a much deeper understanding of the
synchronous / procedural programming
model, especially passing of control. The 'sequence diagram' in
particular seemed to clear up
many misconceptions.
* setup was done by 10 (easily). We did simple gEdit + Python + (on
windows) GitBash.
Most people required no assistence and were able to self-install.
Install instructions could get trimmed down.
Github accounts are useful later on.
* patches for XCodeless ``virtualenv`` still aren't landed. (cf:
https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/issues/168)
* ipython (or bpython or something with tab completion would be
helpful). Foolproof install
instructions would help here (in particular, ``readline`` + ipython
on OSX is gnarly.)
* (possible) alternative to ipython (to get completion?)
$ echo >> ~/.profile PYTHONSTARTUP=~/.pythonstartup
(then put this in ~/.pythonstartup)
try:
import readline
except ImportError:
print "Module readline not available."
else:
import rlcompleter
if 'libedit' in readline.__doc__:
readline.parse_and_bind("bind ^I rl_complete")
else:
readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")
* github accts made it really easy to edit / bughunt / file bugs for
the pystar site. This should be encouraged!
Changing users into contributors is as easy as having them find and
fix a documentation bug :)
For next time:
* add a few new modules
* refine human computer
* add stubs to js modules
* it would still be nice to find a good online python environment.
[xpost to events-list pystar pymntos]
Ian Bicking
* it would still be nice to find a good online python environment.
I'm still intrigued by the idea of a kind of web-based program inspector combined with an editor (my last long-ago attempt at this being HTConsole). I imagine sticking with a fairly conventional notion of source code and whatnot. Greenlets give the possibility of introducing break points (at the source level, or with set_trace). The multiprocess module I think makes the actual process management seem more reasonable. Well... set_trace means you could really watch object, stack, and state as it progresses line by line, which is kind of cooler. Then a dispatch system for registering different HTML views of objects. Anyway, seems fun (to me ;).
Gregg Lind
PyPy seems like a good backing (or GAE), since they sandboxed pythons.
The editor seems a bit gross (most jseditors don't grok / handle tabbing well)
My own fantasy here is to use doctest to build a series of lessons
where people progressively improve code.