PyCon part 2
Blogging live from PyCon. I'm still in Chicago having quite a good time learing stuff related to Python. My second tutorial for the first day was on functional testing with twill and selenium. I already do a lot of that stuff but it was nice to see a good overview of what a mostly automated test suite for functional tests can look like. There was a lot of nice tools that were used to glue everything together. I was a casual user of nosetest and I really look forward to unchain all the powerful features that I didn't know about.
Day two started full speed with a tutorial on Tosca Widgets by Chris Perkins. The level was perfect for me and I like the fact that the framework used for the hands on session was Pylons. It's not just that I already know Pylons quite well, it has something to do with the fact that Pylons is so light as a framework that you can really understand what's going on. Many exercised with a very tight feed back loop and one-on-one help. Wow! Why can't universities hire people like that to give the lectures?
After my second dinner at PyCon, I know that the vegetarian menu, no matter how tasty it is, is sure to keep me slim. It must be the first time that I ever go back to get a second serving of salad.
Last tutorial was on advanced SQLAlchemy with Michael Bayer and Jason Kirtland, the main implementors of Alchemy. That one was quite unique as it featured interactive slides: the slides consisted of a Python scripts that execute code with syntax highlighting when you moved from one slide to the next then give you an interactive interpreter so you can play with the new classes and objects that were just created. That's great but the pace of the presentation was extremely fast and I had a hard time to catch up. When the Alchemy guys say "advanced", they really mean it. Fortunately I still have the slides with me so I can decipher them when I get some time.
I'm now waiting for Francis to get out of his plane so we can go for a beer. What a day; I feel like just one week ago I didn't know anything about the language that I use everyday. That conference is worth it more than I expected. More to come.