Vancouver Python and Zope User Group

Welcome to the home page of the VanPyZ, the Vancouver Python and Zope User Group.

Monthly meetings are normally held on the first Tuesday of each month.

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Next talk

PyCon Trip Report

Brett Cannon and Doug Latornell, April 7th, 2009

Brett and Doug both attended PyCon, the main annual Python conference, and will be back to tell us what was the coolness, what was the hotness, and how many flavours of Python there are now out in the wild.

Time: 7-8:30 PM (Then we generally go out for drinks and conversation afterwards)

Workspace 400 – 21 Water St. Vancouver BC, V6B 1A1

Future talks

Python in the Cloud

Karl Anderson: TBA

Cloud Computing on Hadoop, EC2, and S3 using only Python and some shell glue.

Past talks

2009

Scrambled Eggs: Digesting Python Packaging

Kevin Teague, March 3rd, 2009

There are currently many ways to manage Python-based projects. This talk is a high-level overview of some of the tools present in this space (Distutils, Setuptools, Buildout, VirtualEnv, Py2App, PyPI, Package Indexes) and will attempt to explain the different use-cases that each tool is attempting to solve.

Unit Testing in Python

Henry Prêcheur: February 3, 2009

What is testing? Why testing? How Unittest works with example(s). How Doctest works with example(s). Integration of Unittest & Doctest in your project

slides

What I did (with Python) over the holidays

General discussion of web frameworks, cloud computing, 3D, parsing, robotics and more. Summary of this discussion can be found here.

2008

Parsing and building languages with PyMeta

Tom Marsell: October 7, 2008

Tom will be presenting PyMeta, a new parsing tool based on research from the Viewpoints Research Institute. PyMeta is a version of the VPRI OMeta (PDF) language ported to Python by Allen Short. Time: 7-8:30 PM (Then we generally go out for drinks and conversation afterwards)

Python 2.6/3.0

Brett Cannon: September 2, 2008

I am going to try to cover all the new features in both Python 2.6 and 3.0 (both slated to be released the first week of October). It will be an interactive presentation so feel free to bring any questions that you might have (although, if time doesn't allow it, I can answer questions after the meeting as well).

First looks at Google App Engine

Paul Prescod: May 6, 2008

Google App Engine is Google's attempt to make cloud computing a reality. With App Engine, developers can upload Python Web applications and have them run on Google infrastructure. "For free" you get code and data replication, failover and nearly infinite scalability (given that you adhere to certain programming rules). On the other hand, the current release of App Engine is very limited in its functionality and quotas and long-term features/pricing are unknown. At this talk we'll drill down and discuss what's right with App Engine, what's wrong with it and how it is likely to evolve.

April Fools Programming in Python

Apr 1, 2008

April Fools Programming in Python: forging functions, counterfeiting classes, mocking methods etc.

The once and Import

Brett Cannon: March 4, 2008

The once and future Import: How import works in Python 2.6 and beyond, and what it means for you

Python in Small Places: The XO and N800

Dethe Elza: February 5, 2008

Visual Programming, why it matters for Python

Dethe Elze: January 6, 2008

2007

Other languages from a Pythonic point of view: Haskell, Ruby, Erlang, Processing

Paul Prescod, Dethe Elza, and Brett Cannon: December 4, 2007

Experiences with Django, Turbogears and Twisted/Nevow

Ian Caven and Vlad Orlenko: November 6, 2007

Python and SWIG at Safe Software

Tom Weir: October 2, 2007

Python 3000

Brett Cannon: September 4, 2007

Under development in the mind of Guido for years, Python 3.0 is finally becoming a reality with a planned alpha in August. While great strides are being taken to not change the feel of the language, Python 3.0 does break backwards-compatibility and introduce many new features to the language (while removing other features to make room for the new one). This talk will be a basic overview of what Python 3.0 is trying to accomplish and how it is accomplishing it.

Brett is working towards his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of British Columbia while being one of the core developers of Python.

Stock trading with Python

April 3, 2007

An Automated Trading System (ATS) is used to find profitable trading strategies and electronically execute these strategies across in realtime.

We examine how the ATS retrieves data using TCP/IP sockets and stores large datasets in a HDF5 database. The trading platform uses this data to backtest trading strategies and manage executions across hundreds of stocks. Finally, we review how electronic stock trades can be made using a broker API... all using Python.

Securing Python: Protecting the interpreter from code wielding fresh fruit

Brett Cannon: March 14, 2007

Python currently has no model for safe execution of untrusted code. This talk discusses why this is and how Brett is fixing the problem.

The Django Web Framework

Adrian Holovaty: February 6, 2007

Adrian offered some thoughts about its unique features and answer questions from the audience. Adrian Holovaty is the lead developer of the Django Web Framework. Adrian and his peers invented Django while working at World Online, a highly-renowned news Web operation in Lawrence, Kansas. His team's pioneering work on interactive journalism won numerous awards and was described in The New York Times, NPR and IT Conversations. Currently, Adrian is editor of editorial innovations at Washingtonpost. Newsweek Interactive (washingtonpost.com). His job involves coming up with ideas for site improvements and special projects, and implementing them.

2006

Programming OS X with Python & What is a full-stack Web Framework and why would I want one?

October 3, 2006

Dethe Elza: Programming OS X with Python

Paul Prescod: What is a full-stack Web Framework and why would I want one? (aka: Django and Turbogears Python's answers to Ruby on Rails)

CherryPy, a web development toolkit

Mistu Banerjee: April 4, 2006

Generators, Generator Expressions and Coroutines: Oh My!

Paul Prescod: March 7, 2006

Python has some amazing control structures that can make programming much easier and more convenient than in mainstream languages. Learn more about these structures in this talk.

2005

What’s new in Python 2.5 (hopefully)

Brett Cannon: December 6th, 2005

A review of all the funky new features we can look forward too in upcoming Python 2.5 releases

Solving Sudoko with Python

Ian Cavén: November 1st, 2005

Being interested in Sudoku puzzles but unwilling to spend the time every day to solve them, Ian wrote a Python program to explore strategies to solve these puzzles, finally arriving at a solver that uses Numeric arrays, sets and PyObjC interfaces to the Mac OS UI widgets; the algorithms and code are explained.

Desperately Seeking Abstraction

Mishtu Banerjee: Tuesday October 4th

• “I built an SQL query generator (as part of a larger project) based on the underlying abstraction of representing data models as "networks". It's a nice illustration of abstracting a particular analysis pattern (in this case, we’re abstracting the pattern of multi-table inner joins, which is one of the most common ad-hoc query types)”

Become an artist in your spare time using Python

Neil Kandalgaonkar: June 7th, 2005

Neil Kandalgaonkar spoke about a quick Python hack that generated some strange images. Some people want to hang the images on their wall and some call it “a muddly mess”. Decide for YOURSELF! Also, there was discussion of such trendy concepts as folksonomy, tagging, web APIs, and slagging of PHP.

10 coolest things about Plone

Andy McKay: May 3, 2005

This talk was originally supposed to be: "137 cool things about Plone" but we talked Andy down to just ten. But these ten things are not just cool: they are the coolest. Plone enthusiasts and hecklers equally welcome.

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