Tuesday, August 14, 2007

PPUG

:: Jeff sharing about Python 3000 ::
I'm not sure if PPUG is what we're really calling ourselves (Portland Python User Group). We used to be PORPIG (Portland Python Interest Group). Have we morphed from pig to dog?

I got here late so didn't manage to propose anything for the agenda. I came prepared to give two lightning talks (5 minutes each): my Vilnius-OSCON talk, and the tux droid talk (with Crunchy kindly lent to me by Tara).

I did manage to catch the concluding minutes of Kirk McDonald's talk, about using his Pyd library to write Python extensions in the still-obscure D language.

Jeff talked about Python 3000, using Guido's OSCON slides, prompting some interesting discussion, in which I participated, defending Guido's decision to change the behavior of the division operator, plus mentioning his intent to standardize on Latin-1 in the Standard Library, except for strings like author name. Third party modules are welcome to go wild however, as long as keywords remain keywords.

Mark reviewed David Goodger's OSCON tutorial: How to Program Like a Pythonista while Jeff flipped through David's slides.

I volunteered my lightning talks for next time, plus enjoyed the more informal chat that came afterward -- an important aspect of any Python meetup.

We opted for the IEEE picnic this Saturday. With so few weekends left in the Summer of 2007, I want to maximize time with my family.