I was delayed in Toronto (caught the 8am to Montreal rather than the 7am) due to weather. Missed a keynote. I have notes because that is how I prefer to listen to talks.

Official talk videos on youtube

Talks attended:

Fri

  • Building Secure Software by lvh, woooo! *stroll
  • Experimental pure mathematics using Sage demo here *hike
  • disney!!! (How they use python, etc. Not recorded) *climb
  • erlang/python *step
  • rust is awesome and calling rust from python by DC *hike
  • genome interpretation with python by TB and posted notes *hike
    • “The software is written in Perl 8, for which neither a specification or software interpreter exists.”
    • “And it is illegal to test-drive human genomes”
    • uses Freebayes
    • 23andme plus
    • edit everything
  • astronomy guy talking about numpy *stroll
  • brain modeling with the “neuron” package in python (I had to leave early)

Saturday

  • guido’s keynote (last 10 min) *climb
  • “anonymous” keynote *hike
    • Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (book)
    • Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (book)
  • Onboarding by Kate H *step
  • python process run (the energy guy and Eventbrite guy from after board game night)
  • Docker *hike
  • Ethics (@glyph) *climb
    • VIDEO
    • duty of care
    • persistent failure of copyright law
    • really good, worth watching recording
    • market share
    • “For a large part of recorded history… only a small fraction of the population could perform the act of recording history”
    • CP4E (computer programming fo everyone)
    • “tell users what they can expect” - put the disclaimer on things (mi)
  • Schemas for the real world *stroll
    • “I can be a Mrs and a Dr. You’ve already failed. It’s really easy to wind up looking foolish, and we haven’t even solved the problem that we are here to solve” exhaustive lists #pycon
    • “In real life, saying ‘who you are, is impossible’”
    • “Data modeling is psychology, but it is also philosophy.”
    • “What benefit will the user notice?” vs “how will the user benifit?”
    • http://www.metafilter.com/faq.mefi open text box for gender.
    • “Constraining options does not make internationalization easier. Internationalization on lagal gender: valid legal in germany, australia, other places: blank, x, Mx, etc.
    • fb custom gender, birthday notifications.
    • Mononyms exist legally
    • “It has been quietly parsed”
    • “This is his name. He’s not being ornery. This is his name. It is an ordered list of generations of both maternal and paternal surnames.”
    • Birthplace and cultural heritage. That is none of it a ‘middle name’. This is epic fail. Google contacts.
    • as an engineer, it’s fundamentally uncomfortable to not structure data for analysis.
    • Autosuggest but don’t require defined value. (minimal suggest)
  • Debugging hard problems *hike
    • very popular talk
    • “read all the code. Read any source that seems relevant. The only way to be sure what it does. And read the right version of source code… it is no good to search for subtle behavior in the completely wrong version of a library.”
    • silversearcher
    • lsof, netstat, etc
    • “we pull up the glibc source code, and it becomes obvious. It only took two days! We would never have figured it out if we weren’t all there, and if we weren’t willing to debug bython by looking at c source code.”
    • https://speakerdeck.com/alex https://alexgaynor.net/
  • SaltStack *step
    • “abstract that away” package management worries me
    • “I’m not actually going to show X… it’s petty straightforward…”
    • “I went through a lot of contact really fast… check out my book”
  • Lightning talks
    • SAFRAN Morpho: documenting the documentation (automating the documentation) *hike[LT]
      • used to be a windows document
    • “Eschew the extraneous else” *hike[LT] - if you have an if with a return, you don’t need the else! (duh)
    • Privacy, Identity & User Trust *climb[LT] - “NOT represeting the US govt right now” (required disclaimer?) - “I gre up with an instinctive distrust of… everything” - myUSA - POE (proof of identity) 3 “I can be my husband (and brother and sister and possibly parents” - POE4 via post office sites (prior post office sties lol?) - my objection: my
    • @gergdotca one weird thing about english *step - “grammar geek” (much better than “grammar nazi”) - “can’t just jam two sentences together with a comma” comma splice (but why is it bad? Not just “it is wrong”) - “there is a bug in the software in your brain, and I am here to apply the patch. Please download and install it today” #pycon #commasplice - [I hate when presenters get meta about the presentation] - “the bible can get away with it”
    • cProfile *climb[LT]
      • but I didn’t listen to all of it
    • pro vs mediocre viola players *climb[LT]
      • https://jfraj.github.io/2015/03/29/goodbadviolastrokes.html
    • designer stuff @whoisaldeka *step
    • “[code] Comments: what are they good for?” *climb[LT]
      • beginners comment everything. Everyone else no.
      • “Trying to explain why the code isn’t doing smething that the reader might reasonably expect”
      • comments for people who ARE reading your code, not docstrings (those are so other people don’t HAVE to read your code)
      • comments about why code ISN’T doing something
    • How dolphins and whales hear *stroll[LT]
    • math dude
    • something
    • This dude talking

Sunday

  • Lightning Talks
    • PyGame @lordmauve (last few sec)
    • running a science lab with python *hike[LT]
      • LabView code looks like diagrams. ack
      • PyVisa, PySerial, PyUsb
    • scientific agile *step
    • functional programming in python @manishtomar *backmarch
  • Intro, PSF *backmarch
    • A different style than I usually prefer
    • Paul Graham Python paradox
    • “CIO magazine- about 10 yr behind the times”
    • “I’ll skip over a lot of reasons why javascript worries me”
    • BBC microbit handed out to every UK schoolchild next year!!!
  • Django keynote *stroll
    • I am very glad that this talk exists! I want many people to listen to it. I am feeling kind of personally crispy on diversity panels.
    • “How many programmers does a ‘brilliant asshole’ 10x programmer need to drive away before it’s a wash?”
    • “[Many of the] women in this industry have a story about someone assuming that they’re not a programmer, and who are they here with?”
    • “That fact that any of us are here at all”
    • “I’m personally hiring an intern for the fist time this summer and I’m terrified. I think I know what I’m doing and how to make a welcoming environment, but what if I don’t? I’m experimenting on someone’s career here.”
    • nice laying-out of the rules for the Q&A :) :)

Notes:

  • slides using pypyjs?
  • Astrophysics source code library
  • code.nasa.gov
  • ipython wraps fortran, timeit
  • “This is probably how all of us configured our first server.” Have I ever had a ‘first server’? Have I ever ‘configured a server’? What counts as ‘configuring’? What counts as a ‘server’? I have done lots of things that could be said to be that thing… But none that are what I think that he means.
  • “The video of my … talk from this morning is up” <- this is AMAZING. Pycon does this right.
  • talk title is important :/
  • “Confusion is a sign that you’re about to learn something.” also frustration
  • “He read a lot of comics. For you. You’re welcome.”
  • @astrokiwi to @brandon_rhodes: Would you be interested in an astronomy open space this #pycon? Thinking of posting one
  • Bought pycon hoodie; most likely to use frequently. Also considered laptop sleeve.
  • science… it’s gotta be python. numpy, scipy.
  • @EleonoreMayola “Yes! It happened! I queued for women’s toilets at a programming conference!”
  • I want to see a lightning talk on ‘best current slidemaking code tools’
  • What osx calendar app can I schedule events on from the commandline? Like “$ calendar MTW recur 5wks” or something. Internet is failing me. https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/v3/reference/events/quickAdd

Reviewing things:

This could be a separate post someday. Those weird things next to the star next to talk titles (actually topics, not titles- something for me to remember, not something to find it by) are ratings. Actually, I hate the word ‘ratings’. I want to rate talks, but A-F is bad because some talks I don’t like. Same for 1-5; assigning numbers to this is disingenuious because what are you measuring? There is more than one axis. My ratings are basically how much effort I would tell my prior self to go to in order to see it. It is a very personalized-to-me rating. (The [LT] is for “lightning talk”.) This is a combination of content depth, presenter style, and how I feel about the topic matter. I tend to like fast-paced talks that go into the “why” of the topic and also into the “how”. I tend to like talks with code on screen.

I also happened to attend the PSF yearly members meeting (guest, not member). Good food, good conversation.

Things that pycon gets right:

  • finaid
  • fast video posting
  • code of conduct, enforcement and handling
  • TWO podiums for lightning talks (so next speaker can set up during current speaker)
  • real-time audio captioning
  • the sprints sound really cool
  • a keynote you can tweet during! (good internet)
  • Good transit notes on the website. Good wifi network name.

TODO (for me)

  • get better with ruby debugging tools- remember how you felt about other developers who used println instead of debugging in java? Like that.
  • Next pycon, make an astronomy open space first thing! https://twitter.com/astropy

People run into:

  • Venmo people!!
  • Two people in BT hoodies who recognized me in passing and waved
  • Lady who was also on the 747 bus I rode (got finaid grant, work miiight have sent her, ‘I do as much python as [work] will let me’)
  • BT Adam
  • Ross from PS1