And now for something completely different…
Me: What is the first thing I need to know about Python?
Pythonista: Ok, first, open a command line…
Me: Alright, I’m ready…
Pythonista: Now start Python… so type python and then press return…
Me: Cool, Python is already installed…
Pythonista: Run import this…
Me: (long delay… reading…. now fighting back tears) It’s… It’s beautiful … Who… What…. Where did it come from?
Pythonista: These words are inspired by His design for us.
Me: Tell me more…
First of all, to understand what Python is, you gotta understand who Python the language is. Now Python was born to a benevolent dictator for life named Guido van Rossum. –But don’t get the wrong idea, the cathedral that Guido founded is indeed a community process, it’s just that the community works together under the common vision of “There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it.” To fully understand the vision, and join in the quest for great code, it is also important to know that a moose once bit Guido’s sister.
More Resources/Reading Links that I send in your general direction:
- Take 10 minutes and read: http://www.korokithakis.net/tutorials/python/
- Try it out, right now, in your browser: http://shell.appspot.com/
- The main site: http://python.org/
- History of Python: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Python
- Bill Venner’s thoughtful interview of Guido: http://www.artima.com/intv/guido.html
- Django (it’s from around these parts) is one of the more notable Python-based projects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_(web_framework)
- PyCon (annual community gathering): https://us.pycon.org/2012/
- Could PyCon happen around these parts?
The Python KC Hackathon: 2012-02-11
- Started at 10am on Saturday, in Corporate Woods, Overland Park
- Sharp building, super-easy parking on the weekend
- All the basics – coffee, soda, donuts, bathrooms, wifi, tables, chairs, plugins – and more, the offices were nice
- The organizers help compose the rooms with attendees of aligned expectations/capabilities
- One of the organizers, Pythonista Juan Gomez, helped us newbies feel welcome
- He explained why new developers could feel confident in investing time in Python as their first programming language
- It has a growing community
- It supports multiple paradigms – OOP, imperative, and some functional
- He helped me understand some of the Python culture and history
- Juan felt that the KC User Group culture is great – but he thinks that there is still a hidden wealth of technical talent that isn’t connected to the local community
- He explained why new developers could feel confident in investing time in Python as their first programming language
- A KC User Group Tour Success Story – I overheard Pythonista Mark talking about the lack of Perl community in KC. He was happy to hear about my recent visit to the Mongers. (True story, for real.) He hopes to attend their meeting soon.
- Aside from the general interest in KC User Groups, I did have a specific interest in learning a little more Python – I want Sikuli in my tool box.
- It lets me script with screenshots
- It has a Python (Jython) based scripting engine
Update – Q&A with Juan Gomez:
So far the community has been awesome and the response overwhelming. When the group started, we would’ve been happy with 5 or 6 people showing up for our meetings, but we’ve been fortunate enough to see 20 or more attendees on almost every monthly meeting, not only from the metro area but from nearby cities in both Missouri and Kansas (this weekend we had two Pythonistas visiting from Abilene, KS). We’ve also recently passed the 100 members mark on meetup.com, all in less than a year!
We’re both humbled and excited with the tremendous response from the KC community and hope to grow in many aspects to serve them better in the future.
I can write pages and pages about all the advantages of the language and why big companies like Google or Amazon use it, but for me, the main reason to learn Python is that is fun to use and it helps you rekindle your passion for programming, bringing back joy to your daily work.
Blue … yellow (Movie reference and also the colors of the Python logo 😉
Thanks Juan!
Next Up: KC Rubyists, and their next meeting is on Tuesday, February 21st. Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog to receive notifications of the future happenings in this series.
— Luke Patterson, [email protected]
Other Stops On The KC User Group Tour
Part 1: Perl Mongers
Part 2: Atlassian User Group
Part 3: Pythonistas
Part 4: Rubyists
Part 5: NodeLabs, by NodeKC (a guest post located on the Joyent blog site)