Omaha Python Users Group, Sept 5, Notes

Well we've managed to maintain a new meeting attendance level. There were 6 of us again tonight at the meeting, 5 alumni and 1 new attendee. The meeting started out with some introductions and talk about Py3K alpha. We then turned to talk about the various python implementations C, Iron, Jython and ActiveState's.

Talk then turned to available windowing options and what exactly was built-in for python as opposed to 3rd party libraries. PythonCard is the project I was trying to recall. While not a windowing kit -- it is based on wxPython, it offers a nice entry point in to building a client GUI for a python project for those new to python and GUI kits.

There were some random topics brought up and answered as we munched on some quite good pizza.

We then broke out some code for the pyorhythms group project. We talked about how the imports had been laid out, the over all structure of the program and a number of questions from those new to python were asked. What are those triple commented things (docstrings) how are they used, etc.

We then talked about the use of map statements and what was going to happen to them in Py3K. Someone asked what does reduce do, and I didn't have an answer then as I hadn't used it before, but have one now

"reduce(function, sequence)" returns a single value constructed by calling the binary function function on the first two items of the sequence, then on the result and the next item, and so on. For example, to compute the sum of the numbers 1 through 10:

>>> def add(x,y): return x+y
...
>>> reduce(add, range(1, 11))
55

I did a live demonstration of pyorhythms and there was some pleasant smiles and nods at seeing how well pylab graphed everything.

At the end of the meeting we handed out the door prize, "Beautiful Code."

After the meeting some of stuck around and pondered the architecture of the google file system why doesn't google offer a google apps appliance? and the possible ramifications of Grand Central and the rumored google phone.

For those of you who couldn't attend we hope to see you next month (Brad et al)