Notes from MPUG, May 2014

The May Melbourne Python User Group meeting had 25 people and three speakers.

1. Tim Richardson: An introduction to web2py

Tim walked us through the web2py web framework. Along the way we learnt that Tim is a contributor to the web2py project.

Some take home messages that I wasn’t previously aware of with web2py:

  1. web2py uses a DAL (Database Abstraction Layer) instead of raw SQL
  2. There are inbuilt validator widgets
  3. There is good support for AJAX views (in templates)
  4. Also good support for authorisation and authentication
  5. web2py has it’s own scheduler, running as a separate process with primitive comms via the database
  6. With dynamic construction of the global namespace, some IDE’s struggle. PyCharm (Pro) and PyDev work
  7. There are mixed opinions on web2py’s high load performance
  8. There is a one click installer for Ubuntu
  9. web2py has an inbuilt code editor and debugger

2. Tom Allen: NP-Complete game design in Python

Tom has been designing a two player game where one player lays out track and the other races it. This led to some interesting challenges in dealing with the combinatorial problems.

Some useful resources:

3. Ben Finney — What’s new in Python

There are lots of interesting things happening in Python at the moment. Ben touched on:

  • PEP 0466 – network security enhancements for Python 2.7
  • PEP 0461 – adding % formatting to bytes and bytearray, for Python 3.5
  • PEP 0465 – matrix infix multiplication operator, for Python 3.5
  • Pyston – a new Python implementation on LLVM (being developed at Dropbox)
  • Proctor – HTTP proxy that will distribute requests across a number of managed Tor circuits
  • Lots of interesting videos from PyCon 2014 (in Montreal), including:
    • Brython – Python in the browser
    • Outreach program for women
    • Python in two genders
    • Interactive psych experiments in Pandas 3D
    • Hitchhikers guide to particpating in free software
    • Python packaging: a zeitgeist

Thanks to Inspire9 for hosting the meeting and for videoing the meeting: talks are available on the Inspire9 Vimeo channel.

The next meeting is June 2; 6pm at Inspire9.

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