Sessions at PyCodeConf 2011 with slides on Friday 7th October

Unfortunately, solving simple problems with Python isn't always 'import antigravity'. This talk will analyze the high barriers of entry that clutter the Python landscape. We'll discuss ways to make Python more accessable for newcomers and less of a headache for seasoned veterans.

People keep trying to invent ways to make python run faster - JITs, Java and .Net runtimes, threads, eliminating the Global Interpreter Lock. So why can bup process more than 80 megabytes per second per core? Why can the sshuttle VPN route packets at wire speeds? How does plain python thoroughly trounce JITted languages in certain kinds of benchmarks? And what's really so great about deterministic destructors, anyway? Come hear Avery explain it all in this action-packed whirlwind of fact, fiction, and "other."

As lead for PyLadies and co-lead dev of Django Packages / the Packaginator framework, I've witnessed and helped make amazing things happen in the open source community. I'd like to share thoughts on:

Every intermediate to experienced Python developer has code that can be turned into a reusable Python package. There are sneaky tricks to giving people a gentle push to open-source their code, which have the side consequence of making them better developers.

What makes a Python package useful? How can we improve the quality of our own individual packages?

Watching the Django Packages ecosystem and the PyLadies community thrive and grow has given me ideas about how to jumpstart or grow similar ecosystems and communities. How can you steal ideas from these projects and use them as templates for your own Python niches?

I've made a huge mistake: I've judged programming languages and communities without cause and been the worse for it. With luck, my story of failure will save others the misfortune and embarrassment.

Django, Pyramid, Flask, WSGI itself, so many choices. This talk goes into detail how to make different frameworks play together and which parts of WSGI are good and which ones you should avoid. The talk also shows how to combine applications with code written in other languages and answers why having the choice of multiple solutions is good and not a bad thing.

Breakdancer is a simple python testing tool that allows you to test all possibilities of complex interactions in your application by expressing simple constraints and effects. More details available here: http://dustin.github.com/2010/10...

Anyone can launch their first web startup, but there are a lot of important factors to keep in mind to ensure success. This talk will cover tips and tricks for learning new skills, building and launching quickly as a new programmer, stepping outside your comfort zone, pitfalls to avoid, and fast-tracking yourself to succeed.

In this talk I will describe what NumPy is and why it matters. I will then talk about NumPy and SciPy's future as it should evolve to allow high-level descriptions of optimized low-level calculations as well as it's connection to large-scale data manipulation and processing. I will then spend a few minutes talking about early efforts in evolving NumPy and SciPy and on where people can help.