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December 19, 2011

Ian Ward
excess
excess.org - News
» Unfortunate Python

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Python is a wonderful language, but some parts should really have bright WARNING signs all over them. There are features that just can't be used safely and others are that are useful but people tend to use in the wrong ways.

This is a rough transcript of the talk I gave at my local Python group on November 15, with some of the audience feed back mixed in. Most of this came from hanging around the Python IRC channel, something I highly recommend.

[update 2011-12-19: improved "array" critique, add "python -i" suggestion to "reload" critique, add html targets to sections]

[update 2011-12-20: include additional links from agentultra and ffrinch]

[update 2012-01-06: added hasattr and find]

[update 2012-04-09: some links and syntax highlighting]

8:01 PM under opag , ottawa , python , software
May 25, 2011

Ian Ward
excess
excess.org - News
» Python on Android, Django Unit Testing at OPAG

Ottawa Python Authors Group meeting tomorrow Thursday May 26 at 8p.m. Best of all it's not me talking this time!

Hope you can make it out.

3:50 PM under django , opag , ottawa , python , software
March 22, 2011

Ian Ward
excess
excess.org - News
» Python Data Structures at the Pub Wednesday

The Ottawa Python Authors Group is gathering at the Georgetown pub on Wednesday March 23. The theme of this meeting is Python Data Structures and String Processing. It's a great topic for beginners and experienced python users alike. Hope to see you there.

3:11 AM under opag , ottawa , python , software
February 17, 2011

Ian Ward
excess
excess.org - News
» Moving to Python 3

My article on supporting Python 2 and Python 3 from the same code base is now freely available on LWN.net. The article is based on my recent work on Urwid's Python 3 support. I owe thanks to the people that started and contributed the compatibility work on github and bitbucket. I'm looking forward to a release with Python 3 support very soon.

I also gave a talk at last night's OPAG about these changes. Thank you to all those that came out, we should have these meetings more regularly. Maybe back at the pub next time?

12:58 PM under lwn.net , opag , ottawa , python , software , urwid
January 11, 2011

Ian Ward
excess
excess.org - News
» OPAG Pub Meeting Tuesday

The Ottawa Python Authors Group is gathering at the Georgetown pub tomorrow. The meeting is open and unstructured this time. I'll be there presenting a bit of my recent work with Python 3 and hg-git.

3:16 AM under opag , ottawa , python
August 29, 2010

Ian Ward
excess
excess.org - News
» Sphinx Presentation at OPAG

I will be giving a talk at the September meeting of the Ottawa Python Authors Group covering some documentation work I have done recently using Sphinx domains and a custom Pygments lexer.

I am working on an embedded device for a client that includes a proprietary text command language. Sphinx supports documenting many common languages like C, Python and Ruby, but with the 1.0 release it now allows adding "domains" for new languages. I have used this feature to create a domain for this command language.

Sphinx uses Pygments to provide syntax hilighting for source code examples. None of the available options fit this command language so I also created a custom lexer for this command language in just a few lines of code.

My talk will cover creating these extensions for Sphinx and Pygments.

2:02 PM under opag , ottawa , python , software
April 16, 2010

Ian Ward
excess
excess.org - News
» Nontrivial Django Forms Talk Text

This is the text from the Nontrivial Django Forms talk I gave last Tuesday at the April meeting of the Ottawa Python Authors Group.

This talk starts where the Django forms documentation leaves off.

2:24 PM under django , opag , ottawa , python , software
June 10, 2009

Ian Ward
excess
excess.org - News
» Django 1.1 Talk Video

This is a video of the Django 1.1 talk I gave last night for the Ottawa Python Authors Group. We were bumped out of our reserved room so I did the talk in the pub. The timing worked out quite well, I just finished answering questions as game 6 was starting in the background.

Thank you to Andrew Ross and FOSSLC for doing the recording and setting everything up.

You will need Flash 10 to hear the audio for this presentation. If you don't like flash, please send a polite note to the ePresence people asking for them to support other formats.

4:42 PM under django , fosslc , opag , ottawa , python , software , video
June 7, 2009

Ian Ward
excess
excess.org - News
» Django 1.1 Talk at Ottawa Python Authors Group

I will be giving my Django 1.1 talk at The Ottawa Python Authors Group meeting on Tuesday.

UPDATE: A video of my talk is now available

4:06 PM under django , opag , ottawa , python , software