The December Bangpypers meetup happened at the ThoughtWorks office. Instead of just the usual 3 hour meetup, this time, we had a beginner level Python workshop in the morning which almost the same number of people attended.

Workshop

The workshop commenced at 10:00AM and was facilitated by Sayan. After introudcing Python, he dived deeper into it with hands on exercises for basic strings, data structures and conditions. The session was very interactive and it came to and end at 1:45PM. Find his slides below:

Talks

After finishing the workshop as well as lunch, everyone gathered back at the TW hall around 3PM and the sessions started at around 3:20PM.

The sessions kicked off with Kracekumar’s introduction to iPython. He started off by explaining the various difficulties that users face while fiddling around with the normal Python shell, multiline editing being the major bottle neck. He went one explaining the myriad of features that came with iPython that helped make life much easier. Auto-completion, iPython notebook, running system command from within the interpreter, getting help for the objects, and ended with displaying nbviewer, where you could share your iPython notebooks as gists. You can find his notebook here.

Next up was Shoaib Najeeb with his talk on using Cassandra from Pycassa. It was quite an elaborate talk where he started right from the basics explaining the NoSQL database layout contrasting it with the RDBMS ones. After having gotten everyone on the same page with the Cassandra basics, he then moved onto explaining the CAP theorem as well as the configuration required on Pycassa to get it up and running. The session was extremely interactive where he was bombarded with questions, all of which he replied to to the best of his knowledge. As time was running out, leaving his audience thirsty for more, he concluded his session by 5:40PM. The link to his presentation will be updated soon.

To end the day’s fireworks, we had Fayaz presenting his session on logging. He started off from the basics, explaining the need for logging in any project that was going into production. Moving forward by sharing some of his insights into the best practices of using logging, he introduced various features that came with the library. He also mentioned some useful utilities such as the Redis Handler, the FingersCrossedHandler as well as the TicketingHandler. Having convinced his audience to go back and get started with logging, he wound up his session by 6:15PM, thereby bringing the meetup to an end. His presentation shall be shared soon.

Thanks to everyone who attended and let’s keep the ball rolling folks!