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Ear­lier this week — Joe Amenta shot an email to the Python-Dev mail­ing list announc­ing the com­ple­tion of the Google Sum­mer of Code project he had be work­ing on — a Python 3 to Python 2 trans­la­tion tool.

This is some­thing which, when dis­cussed at the Python Lan­guage Sum­mit at PyCon 2009 was met with much “yes please make this” — but not a lot of peo­ple could allo­cate the time. In fact, when asked who could at least help drive it for­ward, I was lame^H^H^H awe­some enough to raise my hand.

In true upper man­age­ment style, I dis­cussed it, and promptly del­e­gated it to Ben­jamin Peter­son, our release man­ager to later del­e­gate to a google sum­mer of code project.

Some work was done dur­ing the sprints — I don’t know if that work ended up being part of this, but thanks to Joe, we now have the first alpha of a Python 3 to Python 2 con­ver­sion tool.

Here’s Joe’s announce­ment:

Hello all,

I have released the first alpha ver­sion of 3to2 after fin­ish­ing it for my Google Sum­mer of Code 2009™ project. You can get the tar­ball for this release at http://bitbucket.org/amentajo/lib3to2/downloads/3to2_0.1-alpha1.tar.gz. This requires python 2.7, because it requires a newer ver­sion of 2to3 than what comes with 2.6.

Release notes are in the RELEASE file. Devel­op­ment hap­pens at http://bitbucket.org/amentajo/lib3to2/, and the source code for this release lives at http://bitbucket.org/amentajo/3to2-01-alpha-1.
Report bugs at http://bitbucket.org/amentajo/lib3to2/issues/, please.

Addi­tional notes and com­ments can (for now) be found at http://www.startcodon.com/wordpress/?cat=4.

–Joe

This is awe­some — again, major props to Joe (and Ben­jamin!) and GSoC for mak­ing this hap­pen. Please, please, please — if you have free time, go give it a shot. Espe­cially if you have real, honest-to-goodness Python 3 code you’re work­ing with.

Right now, it’s prob­a­bly too early to get near python-core — there’s some dis­cus­sion of that going on in the thread on Python-dev, but I per­son­ally feel if we can bang the hell out of this and get a lot of eyes look­ing at it, it would go a long way towards help­ing Python 3 adop­tion along.

Go check it out — again, the project page is here, and Joe’s notes on things 3to2 does not accept is here.

p.s. The first per­son to write an online 2to3 -> 3to2 app ala trans­la­tion party gets mad props, and a bot­tle of some­thing alco­holic at Pycon.

Earlier this week - Joe Amenta shot an email to the Python-Dev mailing list announcing the completion of the Google Summer of Code project he had be working on - a Python 3 to Python 2 translation tool. This is something which, when discussed at the Python Language Summit at PyCon 2009 was met ...

PyCon is com­ing back around — although it seems as if we just fin­ished PyCon 2009! This next PyCon (PyCon 2010) will be held in Atlanta, Geor­gia Feb­ru­ary 17 through 25th at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta. PyCon 2010 is now accept­ing talk pro­pos­als — the Call for Papers went out yesterday!

This year is a bit dif­fer­ent for me; this year I’ve taken the torch of Pro­gram Com­mit­tee chair from Ivan Krsti? — this means I get to “lead up” the com­mit­tee in reach­ing out for talks, review­ing pro­pos­als and choos­ing the con­tent all of us will be privy to. This isn’t a job I take lightly; hav­ing been both a speaker and a critic of con­tent in the past, I’m very sen­si­tive to the qual­ity of the talks we get at the con­fer­ence. That being said…

PyCon 2009, by most mea­sure­ments was one of the most suc­cess­ful and well-run PyCons to date. I met more Python­istas in the week-and-a-half I was there, had some of the best con­ver­sa­tions and went to some of the best talks I’ve had the priv­i­lege of going to ever there. I was lucky enough to also stay through the sprints for the entire time, and had one of the best times I’ve ever had coding.

PyCon 2009 was an inter­est­ing ani­mal — despite most of the world being sucked down by an econ­omy doing it’s best boat anchor impres­sion, and with many con­fer­ences sim­ply clos­ing down entirely — we still man­aged to get around 900 peo­ple to come, which is sim­ply amazing.

That all being said — I think PyCon 2010 can be bet­ter. In fact, it’s my firm belief that a lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion is good, and there’s no bet­ter com­pe­ti­tion than try­ing to one-up some­thing you’ve done in the past. So, not to dimin­ish what’s hap­pened in the past — but let’s kick our own ass. Let’s make PyCon 2010 bet­ter — and ulti­mately that requires you.

PyCon is a vol­un­teer run, vol­un­teer made, vol­un­teer speaker con­fer­ence. It’s up to you, me, and every­one within the Python com­mu­nity to make this thing a suc­cess. Every speaker, every reviewer — every vol­un­teer down to some­one who helps bag t-shirts the night before help make this one of the best con­fer­ences out there.

This is a call for you yes, you to step up and help PyCon 2010 kick ass. Think you have an idea for a talk? Sub­mit it. Seri­ously. Even if you’re ner­vous, a first time speaker, or you’re unsure of your topic — our crack team of review­ers (which you can also be one of) will help you mas­sage and improve your submission.

If you want to have some point­ers on how to make your talk bet­ter — check out out this video (a talk on… giv­ing python talks!). Bet­ter yet, hit up pycon.blip.tv and watch some of the talks from the past.

Some poten­tial talk top­ics I’d per­son­ally like to see are:

• Deep dives into more-advanced parts of python (a great exam­ple is Ray­mond H’s “Core Python Con­tain­ers” talk”)
• Python 3 stuff — importlib, han­dling bytes vs. strings, etc.
• Idiomatic/optimized Python code (“make my code better”)
• Testing(and test­ing with) Python (I think michael should do a talk on all the new UnitTest stuff he and oth­ers have done)
• Cloud com­put­ing infra­struc­ture — not “using” the cloud — more “build­ing and deploy­ing the cloud”. Some­thing which comes to mind is a talk on Fabric.
• A talk on pip/virtualenv
• How to con­tribute to Python — and avoid Lindberg’dification (I sus­pect that’s not a word)
• Get­ting $THING done with Python — one of the key draws of Python, and what makes me so pas­sion­ate about it is that it sim­ply lets me get things done — what have you got­ten done with Python? Most of all — how did you do it? What did you use?

Again, per­son­ally — I’d rather see less “we did this cool thing” and more “this is how we did this cool thing. I know that’s a tall order for what can be a short win­dow of time, but sup­ple­ment it with down­loads, blog posts — give peo­ple some­thing that they can take home and do.

If you don’t feel com­fort­able doing a talk — maybe you’re bet­ter off being a talk Reviewer. Talk review­ers are respon­si­ble for help­ing talk sub­mis­sions by ask­ing ques­tions, mak­ing improve­ment sug­ges­tions — and they ulti­mately decide what talks every­one is going to see. They help make-or-break the con­fer­ence as a whole. It requires read­ing, and a will­ing­ness to dis­cuss — I know every­one out there can do that, and we need peo­ple with all types of skills and back­grounds to help us make sure every­thing gets a fair treat­ment and rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Again, see this page for how to become a reviewer.

If you don’t feel com­fort­able with doing a talk, or review­ing — check out the “Help­ing Out at PyCon” page for other ways of help­ing. We need ses­sion run­ners, A/V peo­ple, peo­ple to man the reg­is­tra­tion desk; every­thing. Check out the staffing page for slots we need to fill!

Finally — if you don’t do any­thing else: Come. Bring a friend, bring two friends. Bring peo­ple who might only be vaguely inter­ested in Python, expose them to this great com­mu­nity and the pas­sion of it. Come for the talks, the open space dis­cus­sions — and the sim­ple oppor­tu­nity to come and meet some of the bright­est peo­ple in the community.

Then stay for the sprints; cause they’re damned use­ful and fun.

PyCon is coming back around - although it seems as if we just finished PyCon 2009! This next PyCon (PyCon 2010) will be held in Atlanta, Georgia February 17 through 25th at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta. PyCon 2010 is now accepting talk proposals - the Call for Papers went out yesterday! This year is a ...

Call for pro­pos­als — PyCon 2010 — http://us.pycon.org/2010/

Due date: Octo­ber 1st, 2009

Want to show­case your skills as a Python Hacker? Want to have
hun­dreds of peo­ple see your talk on the sub­ject of your choice? Have some
hot but­ton issue you think the com­mu­nity needs to address, or have some
pack­age, code or project you sim­ply love talk­ing about? Want to launch
your mas­ter plan to take over the world with python?

PyCon is your plat­form for get­ting the word out and teach­ing some­thing
new to hun­dreds of peo­ple, face to face.

Pre­vi­ous PyCon con­fer­ences have had a broad range of pre­sen­ta­tions,
from reports on aca­d­e­mic and com­mer­cial projects, tuto­ri­als on a broad
range of sub­jects and case stud­ies. All con­fer­ence speak­ers are vol­un­teers
and come from a myr­iad of back­grounds. Some are new speak­ers, some
are old speak­ers. Every­one is wel­come so bring your pas­sion and your
code! We’re look­ing to you to help us top the pre­vi­ous years of suc­cess
PyCon has had.

PyCon 2010 is look­ing for pro­pos­als to fill the for­mal pre­sen­ta­tion tracks.
The PyCon con­fer­ence days will be Feb­ru­ary 19–22, 2010 in Atlanta,
Geor­gia, pre­ceded by the tuto­r­ial days (Feb­ru­ary 17–18), and fol­lowed
by four days of devel­op­ment sprints (Feb­ru­ary 22–25).

Online pro­posal sub­mis­sion is open now! Pro­pos­als will be accepted
through Octo­ber 1st, with accep­tance noti­fi­ca­tions com­ing out on
Novem­ber 15th. For the detailed call for pro­pos­als, please see:

http://us.pycon.org/2010/conference/proposals/

For videos of talks from pre­vi­ous years — check out:

http://pycon.blip.tv

We look for­ward to see­ing you in Atlanta!

Call for proposals -- PyCon 2010 -- http://us.pycon.org/2010/ Due date: October 1st, 2009 Want to showcase your skills as a Python Hacker? Want to have hundreds of people see your talk on the subject of your choice? Have some hot button issue you think the community needs to address, or have some package, code or project you simply love ...

Now that activ­ity is spin­ning up around pycon 2010 and the suc­cess of PyOhio, an idea popped into my head ear­lier today about hold­ing a small (2 day) mini con­fer­ence in the Northeast.

Specif­i­cally, I’m talk­ing about the Boston Area. Boston’s a great town for vis­it­ing and doing some­thing like this (tons of pub­lic tran­sit, etc). Not to men­tion, I live just a bit out­side of it.

The obvi­ous down­side is cost; Boston isn’t a cheap town, so if this nascent idea came to fruition, I’d have to find a great hotel deal, and host­ing space for some­thing like this. And spon­sors, etc.

My ini­tial gut on this is that there might not be enough Python­istas within the NE or dri­ving dis­tance to make some­thing like this truly suc­cess­ful. Which is why I’m post­ing this — how many peo­ple would be inter­ested in attend­ing some­thing like this?

2 days, 45 minute-1 hour talks. If a spon­sor were to step for­ward and offer sprint-space, maybe 1 day of sprint­ing. Depend­ing on the num­ber of talks/attendees, 1 track for sure — 2 if I was to get a land­slide, but no talks within the same tech­no­log­i­cal sphere against one another (e.g. a Django talk at the same time as a Plone talk). Addi­tion­ally, I’d rather have ded­i­cated open space/sprinting space then add an addi­tional talk track even with a ton of response.

Edit to add: Sev­eral peo­ple have men­tioned that they’ve had bet­ter luck with 30–45 minute talk length caps. After some dis­cus­sion last night — sin­gle track would be pre­ferred. There­fore — 30–45 minute talks, sin­gle track. If we could get space, we’d have a ded­i­cated sprint room.

I don’t, how­ever, want to hold this in an edu­ca­tional venue — I’ve become aller­gic to doing things like that due to pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences. I can always be con­vinced oth­er­wise though, it would have to come from an administrator/coordinator of the school; not a student.

Time­line? 4–5 months after Pycon 2010, which is in Feb­ru­ary — this places it in the June/July time­frame. Wait­ing until after this, say Fall, means stu­dents from MIT/BU/etc would be able to attend, which could mean more expo­sure to peo­ple maybe not as famil­iar with the language.

I’d want Brett Can­non to come too — but only on the con­di­tion he com­plains about some­thing (yes that’s a joke).

So, would you be interested/willing to come. Where would you be trav­el­ing from? Do you like Beer (we have lots)?

In other news, Andrew Kuch­ling has fin­ished a revamp of the Python.org dona­tion page here. You should donate!

Now that activity is spinning up around pycon 2010 and the success of PyOhio, an idea popped into my head earlier today about holding a small (2 day) mini conference in the Northeast. Specifically, I'm talking about the Boston Area. Boston's a great town for visiting and doing something like this (tons of public ...