Minneapolis PyStar 4 (After Action Report)

[Gregg Lind]

Minneapolis PyStar 4 (After Action Report)
=============================================

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]

[Lukas Blakk]

This is excellent and reminds me - can we do a BOF at PyCon for any
PyStar folks who are there to clean up curriculum, perhaps sprint on new
stuff and do a roundtable of our various take aways. It's been a year
since the birth of the PyStar model, let's evaluate and get some "where
to now?" ideas going.

Cheers,
Lukas

[Gregg Lind]

I would be glad to! I never got around to scheduling a formal "day
before" PyStar, but would be glad to, if someone points me in the best
direction. Guerilla style preferred :)

GL

[Tim Baldoni]

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 15:37, Gregg Lind <gregg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]

> *  it would still be nice to find a good online python environment.

> [...]

http://labs.codecademy.com/#:workspace

[Eryn O'Neil]

That Code Academy one looks sweet. I will have to test that out.

This has been my lightweight goto in the past: http://codepad.org/