DC Python Meetup

Group Coding Session

January 26 · 10:00 AM
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SocialCode is hosting the DC Python group coding session on January 26th 2013 at 10:00am! They are located on the 9th floor of the building, and have two large rooms to host all the participants. We have access to their rec room as well, so we won't have to depart for lunch.

There are quite a few project ideas to help people hone their development skills. Please visit the poll and choose which project you would be most interested in. Or, please suggest more ideas! We want to make sure that everyone has a goal, and can feel some accomplishment by the end of the day.

There is limited space, so if you are unable to attend, please modify your RSVP accordingly just in case the waitlist activates. See you all there!

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Adam Siwek

Good

0 · January 28
Victor 'Chris' Cabral

I had a great time. Wish we went longer. In homage to the meetup I offer a blog post from /r/programming http://maxburstein.com/blog/pyt...

0 · January 27
Matthew Makai

Great to see you all yesterday. I took some pictures and wrote up a quick blog post: http://www.codingacrossamerica....

0 · January 27
Jonathan Fichter

Great session yesterday! Thanks to everyone. Just posted my top takeaways: http://fichterforunderstanding....

0 · January 27
Rob Jamison

Informative and Useful in so far
1) Seeing what applications others were using Python for
2) Learning about online resources others were using
3) Having conversations about uses of Python to bridge limitations of other languages

0 · January 27
Christopher

I'm curious what the GIS coders are doing. I do a bunch of ArcPy/Esri stuff. I've been playing around with MongoDB / Flask to create a weather map. I'm open to doing Arcpy or learning open source mapping stuff.

0 · January 24
- View all 3 replies
- Mike Onzay
  
  I would like to do some ArcPy work also, however, I'm also interested in any open source equivalents.
  
  0 · January 25
- Tyler Garner
  
  The problem with arcpy is that most non-gis professionals will not have access to it due to its dependency on Arc. I would love to learn more about open source geoprocessing libraries and web based geoprocessing using django (or other frameworks).
  
  0 · January 25
- Christopher
  
  @tyler - Agreed. I would love to learn more OS stuff. I just do not have a ton of experience with it. I'd be interested in setting up some sort of GP rest interface. DC has tons of data out there, maybe we can setup some sort of map interface? http://data.dc.gov/
  
  0 · January 25
Steve Marks

All,
Something came up so I will no longer be able to attend. Bummed but glad someone else can go now! Is there any way somebody can post slides/code that is covered in the session to this site? Thanks

0 · January 24
A former member

Approximately how late do you expect the event to go? For reference, I am intending to work on the CWOS project. I'm just trying to plan for the rest of my day. Thanks!

0 · January 24
- Ryan Day
  
  We certainly don't intend on keeping you past a legally justifiable time frame. We actually are very flexible in terms of time. I think we would go until 4:30 officially. But you can certainly leave earlier, and if you are having a breakthrough moment we can stay a little later as well.
  
  0 · January 24
David Marx

Hey all,

I'm really excited for this event and have been looking forward to it since the announcement, but something's just come up that will require me to arrive a few hours late. Will that be ok, or should I just rescind my RSVP to let someone on the waitlist in? I defer to the group. If I can let someone on the waitlist in and still show up late and jump in a group, that'd be great.

0 · January 23
- Ryan Day
  
  I think you will be ok showing up a little later. People will most likely show up when they are able, especially given the possible weather conditions.
  
  0 · January 24
Tom Baker

I would like to propose my own relatively simple command-line script, https://github.com/tombaker/mkli....

The script re-writes and re-sorts folders of plain-text to-do lists according to rules that you edit as your needs evolve, then urlifies the lists for your browser. I have run this script, which in its previous Korn shell incarnation was featured in UnixWorld (1994) and lifehacker.com (2006), for 20 years.

The current Python version is fast and stable, but I would now like to re-write it, completely from scratch, with unit tests, per-directory configuration files in YAML, documentation in markdown, and possibly OO design.

I could demo the current script in a lightning talk and present the requirements as I see them. We could use it as an opportunity to test the Pythonic ideal of starting a coding project with unit tests and collectively walk through the paces of documenting even a relatively simple project in a well-managed Github repository.

Any interest?

0 · January 23
Ramesh Sampath

Can we have a lightning talk on the various track goals for the day at the start of the meetup session?

0 · January 23
- Aaron Titus
  
  I had planned to do that very thing regarding the Collaborative Work Order System.
  
  0 · January 23
- Jonathan Street
  
  Hi Ramesh, I've volunteered to guide the scientific computing group. As far as possible I'm hoping to shape the session to match the experience levels and interests of the group. Having said that I would certainly be happy to offer some suggestions as to what we might do at the start.
  
  0 · January 23
Ramesh Sampath

Looking forward to the coding meetup. I am interested in Machine Learning with Python and Web dev with a small framework (Flask). I have couple of suggestions:
1. Working on a Kaggle competition and submitting an entry. For example - http://www.kaggle.com/c/event-r.... I am keen to learn Numpy / Scikit and put it to use on this.

2. Building a small web app with Flask using Twitter Bootstrap template and deploying in Google App engine or elsewhere?

0 · January 14
- View all 3 replies
- Jonathan Street
  
  Hi Ramesh, numpy and the ecosystem around it is fantastic. Scikits is good and getting better and that is just one of the options. There are too many packages available to name them all but two I want to explore are Orange and Milk. Orange is more a data exploration framework which I can see being useful. I'm not sure how Milk would compare with scikits but I want to take a look at it because the same author also developed mahotas which I have been using a lot recently to generate images like http://jonathanstreet...
  
  0 · January 16
- Ramesh Sampath
  
  Hi Jonathan, That's great. Do you want those of us in Scientific computing camp to install Orange / Milk or would we be working on Numpy / Scikits? I attended Scipy and PyData conference last year and it emphasized mainly Numpy / Scipy / Scikit-learn / Pandas. I did not hear about Orange or Milk pages. I am OK to try these if that's of interest. Would be great to know what packages we want installed as some of these could take a good 30minutes+ to get them setup.
  
  0 · January 23
- Jonathan Street
  
  Although Orange and Milk look interesting I haven't explored either myself yet in any detail. It's not really fair to expect you to install either on the off-chance that we use them. The core requirements, in roughly decreasing order of importance,are likely to be python, numpy, scipy, matplotlib, scikits.learn, pandas and statsmodels. I want the session to be accessible to as many people as possible so I'm not assuming everyone will have this entire list installed before we begin.
  
  0 · January 23
Kevin Tambara

I wish I could attend this Sat, but I have a major schedule conflict. Someone else can take my spot on the "attending" list. Not sure how to change my RSVP status...

0 · January 23
- A former member
  
  just click on where the RSVP is and change your status. good luck.
  
  0 · January 23
prabhukiran vempati

Hi what is the setup needed for the coding session.
Tools, platform, packages etc
Thanks

0 · January 23
- Ryan Day
  
  You will need a laptop with Python installed, and an intense desire to learn. Or you can go old school and write your programs by hand. If you want to work on CWOS, we highly recommend installing that code before Saturday. I'll see you there!
  
  0 · January 23
- Victor 'Chris' Cabral
  
  For extra credit, I would recommend setting up pip, virtualenv, and git.
  
  1 · January 23
Sparkles

I have a family emergency and therefore will be out of town. Wish I could go!

0 · January 23
Tino

Hey, what are the chances that I will be coming off the waitlist? A lot of the times, meetup groups have about half to 2/3 of the people that have sign up come. Just wondering.

0 · January 23
Aaron Titus

I'm excited to be there on Saturday. Thank you so much for the enthusiastic support for Hurricane Sandy Victims. The Collaborative Work Order System (CWOS-- soon to be re-launched at crisiscleanup.org) is the largest Open Source, Open Data project to assist hurricane cleanup. It's been used to manage 30,000 volunteers at more than 4,000 locations from Connecticut to Long Island, New York, and New Jersey.

It has received a lot of attention, and FEMA would like to introduce the collaborative work order system across the country.

Your support will help us fix a long list of bugs and major feature requests. Thank you again for your support, and I'll see you Saturday.

0 · January 23
Aniket Desai

My apologies if this is the wrong kind of update. We have a position open in our group for an entry/mid level C/C++ developer with some flair for networking protocols and wireless technologies in particular. I noticed a couple of people were asking about finding Python jobs, hence my upfront apology in advance. You might either send me a message directly, or connect with me on linkedin.

Good luck! Looking forward to the upcoming group coding event.

0 · January 21
A former member

When will wait listed members know they can or cannot attend the Social Code event?

0 · January 16
- Ryan Day
  
  As spots open up, you will be automatically moved into the Confirmed position.
  
  0 · January 16
- A former member
  
  Thanks for the feedback, very helpful.
  
  0 · January 16
A former member

Thanks for all the positive feedback. Any suggestions on helpful books on Python I can start to review would be great!

0 · January 8
- Jonathan Street
  
  We're spoilt for choice with tutorials. The best one will depend on your learning style so I'll try and list a few options and you can decide which one works best for you. http://www.codecademy... http://www.learnpytho... <- online interactive tutorials. http://learnpythonthe... <- quite new but has received a lot of positive response. http://inventwithpyth... <- learn python while creating games. http://www.greenteapr... <- a more traditional book
  
  1 · January 9
- A former member
  
  Thanks Jonathan
  
  0 · January 11
A former member

I'm a newbie and have never coded before so I'm not sure if this the best session if you have so many other coders. Let me know and if I should bring anything to help.

0 · January 8
- View all 3 replies
- Jackie Kazil
  
  Lisa - we would love to have you. You should also checkout PyLadies' next event: http://www.meetup.com...
  
  0 · January 8
- Jonathan Street
  
  Hi Lisa, welcome to the group. As far as I know the intention is very much that whatever your familiarity with python you'll be able to get something out of this session.
  
  0 · January 8
- Ryan Day
  
  There are many new programmers who will be attending, I've been contacted by several. You will be in great company with many eager teachers! See you there!
  
  0 · January 8
jab

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1 · January 8
Rob Jamison

Just found this group and am local to the DC area. I'd enjoy meeting some other folks interested in Python in person.

0 · December 10
Mark Trimble

I'm a python beginning who would very much like to participate in a group coding session that could provide help for me in building a very basic (non-graphical) strategy game on a 2D grid "mapboard". Do you think this session would be appropriate for this or would another session/meetup be better suited?

0 · December 4
- Ryan Day
  
  Does it have to be non-graphical or is that just for simplicity sake? Pygame is amazingly easy to use. I think this would be a good idea to add to the list though. I'm compiling several ideas and it looks like we'll have enough people to form a lot of groups.
  
  0 · December 7
- Mark Trimble
  
  Yes, the non-graphical comment was simply a way to communicate that *very* basic is OK with me to start with. But if graphical elements can be added easily, I'm certainly not opposed to using them.
  
  0 · December 7