Broadening our focus

[SeanB]

At our last meeting we discussed broadening our focus beyond Python to
incorporate other programming languages. There are several ways this
could go:
* high-level overview of language X: what's it best suited for? What
makes it unique?
* comparing different languages for specific tasks ("building a web
site fast withi X")
* important libraries for language X that do something awesome

I expect we'll want to focus on the most important modern languages.

If you're interested in this kind of emphasis and would be be willing
to commit to attending or (even better) presenting at a meeting like
this, add your comments to this thread. I'm also interested in other
proposals for how to broaden interest in the group while keeping the
focus on practical programming practices.

Sean

[Joshua Drake]

Hello,

You might also consider complimentary technologies like, PostgreSQL.

(I can give talks on any number of PostgreSQL topics).

JD

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[Ryan Riley]

I think this is a terrific idea. I'd be happy to talk about F#, its similarities and differences. I think it would also be nice to see solutions using any given language, especially compared with Python or another language with which most are familiar, in order to show why a different language (or tool) might be worth considering.

Further, David Ladiges and I have been discussing the merits of potentially partnering the Bellingham .NET User Group we help run with other groups to support the geek culture at large. Is there any interest? The primary idea here is that we might be able to talk about larger level ideas. Postgres vs other databases, big data, or cloud storage options are a few ideas there.

Ryan

[Peter Rust]

I think it would be a very good idea to broaden the focus of the group and/or partner with other local programming groups. Most professional developers work in more than one language and even those who don’t are influenced by ideas and frameworks that originate in other languages. Ryan Riley probably knows better than I do, but I think there are a number of the Ruby web developers involved in Web Designers Unite.

 

I can commit to present at a group like this because it would allow me to present things in Javascript, the language I work with primarily (but most of the things I do have direct relevance in other languages: automated testing, MVC, SQL optimization, etc, etc).

 

Python, Javascript and Ruby seem to be the most popular high-level languages in the open-source community. That said, it feels a bit artificial to draw a line around open-source – those working with .Net/Microsoft languages are dealing with the same issues (automated testing, web frameworks, SQL/NoSQL persistence, etc) and there seems to be more cross-pollination and influence between the open-source and the Microsoft communities than there used to be. And we shouldn’t forget about iOS development, which is also concerned with many of the same issues and is of interest to many developers.

 

Perhaps it goes without saying, but I do think it would be helpful for the focus of the group to remain on high-level applications programming, as opposed to low-level, operating system and device driver programming.

 

I could give talks on jQuery, client-side MVC (Backbone), client-side functional programming (Underscore.js), client-side automated testing (Selenium IDE, Jasmine), server-side javascript (Node.js), distributed source control (hg, git), SQL optimization (with SQLite, but should apply to most SQL engines) and even (though it’s a bit less mainstream) writing a Firefox extension in Python. Future talks might include some Ruby-and-Python tools for continuous integration and deployment/delivery that we are starting to use, as well as a NoSQL option like Riak or CouchDB.

 

I would love to hear talks on automated testing techniques (from traditional unit-testing to the newer behavior-driven approaches, as well as the crowd of surrounding topics such as Dependency Injection, mocks/spies, etc). I would also like to hear talks on server-side web frameworks (Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Django, etc). I’m also somewhat interested in Ruby and in functional languages like F#.

 

> David Ladiges and I have been discussing the merits of potentially partnering the Bellingham .NET User Group

> we help run with other groups to support the geek culture at large

> The primary idea here is that we might be able to talk about larger level ideas

For a joint-meeting like this, are you thinking of focusing on high-level concepts at the exclusion of “how to” sorts of talks? For instance, a “how to” talk on a particular cloud storage implementation, such as Amazon S3? I would imagine that “How to” talks on libraries (memcached, Postgres, etc) and services (Amazon S3, Facebook API, etc) that have a variety of language bindings would be very applicable to developers coming from a variety of languages.

 

I think there is a lot of value in both a joint-meeting like this that focuses exclusively on talks that have direct relevance to multiple languages (either because they are at a high conceptual level or because there are a variety of language bindings available). I think there is also a lot of value in a group like what Sean is proposing that includes a wider variety of talks about language-specific libraries or implementations (for instance Django or Ruby’s Cucumber test framework), which have indirect relevance to other languages.

 

-- peter

[Jonathan Williamd]

I could talk next month. I have been implementing a FORTH interpreter,
so I could talk about FORTH. Also, general fun stuff like RoR/Radient etc.