What's so cool about Python?

Many people who discover Python (the agile programming language used by Google, YouTube, Red Hat Linux, and many others) find it to be exciting and fun. Python combines clear syntax with remarkable power, and offers exhilarating productivity that most programmers are unwilling to give up once they have tasted it.

Mission

Rochester Python Programmers was formed with a mission to facilitate the sharing of Python programming knowledge among its members. Our meetups provide an occasional Python centric environment for weary Pythonistas in a world that is still stuck in Java and C++, and a place where new Python programmers can learn and grow. We are a mix of students, professional programmers, hackers, hobbyists, and business people, but we all share an appreciation for the remarkable power of Python.

Vision

We envision that as the Rochester area continues its adoption of this wonderful language for all sorts of fun and worthy purposes, we are a resource that is drawn upon for support. Our energy and enthusiasm focuses knowledge and kindles interest. Our support of the adoption of this better way to program computers has significant positive impact in the community around us.

New members are welcome. Join now and be part of the vision.

Collaboration

Python has a huge role in bringing people together. Check out..
The Z Object Publishing Environment. (Zope)
The Plone Content Management System
Django web app framework. Easier than zope and Plone
TurboGears another "easier" web app framework.
ZWiki, a wiki product for Plone
Moin Moin wiki
Wicked wiki for Plone
Mailman mailing list manager. Used by sourceforge, notably.
Trac wiki and issue tracker
Mercurial decentralized source code control system.

Networking

Twisted. THE Python networking package.

Core Python

The wxpython bindings
PyGame-Not just a game engine!
Dabo, pythonic wxPython with relational persistence

Python for scientists and engineers

Python has a lot to offer in the science and engineering disciplines. Greg Wilson at the University of Toronto is developing a course in software carpentry that focuses on the computational needs of scientists and engineers, and is a recommended resource. Basically, scientists and engineers often write software, but consider software to be a "necessary evil" for getting something else done.

A user of MATLAB and IDL (costly for an individual to purchase) may be interested to know that the Python community offers free alternatives of very high quality:
matplotlib,
numpy and
numarray!

Other great science and engineering sites to check out:

SciPy
Python bindings for ODE, the Open Dynamics Engine
Mayavi 3d visualization.
The Visualization Toolkit
Visual Python.

Miscellaneous Python sightings:

Iron Python - Microsoft is doing an open-source version of Python for their .NET platform! Guess they figured they should start doing things the way Google and Red Hat do!
Blender. 3D rendering and animation with CAD import./ export
GNU Med, an open-source paperless doctor's office software project.
Frets on Fire, an award-winning Guitar Hero clone.
The Central Intelligence Agency website is a Plone site. Big Brother uses Python!
One Laptop Per Child uses Python a lot. The GUI, Sugar, is in Python.
BitTorrent, the file-sharing app whose clones still hold places in sourceforge's top ten, is written in Python.
Toontown Online a massively multiplayer online game by Disney, is written in Python. Toontown is fun for kids of all ages. Toontown uses:
Panda 3D, an open-source game building package. Disney figured this library, the Platform Agnostic Networked Display Architecture, wasn't it's real intellectual property and open-sourced it as a smart business decision.
Python-Ogre, Python bindings for the incredible OGRE Object oriented Graphics Rendering Engine.

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Is meetup.com a good host for our group? I get the impression from reading this news post (which describes a strong relationship between RedHat Linux and meetup.com) that meetup.com is pretty cool! Especially the quote by meetup.com VP Myles Weissleder, who is listed on omidyar.net.

Red Hat Linux is a major user of Python, and uses it in many system utilities.
Omidyar.net is a Plone site started by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of ebay and a philanthropic pioneer in the area of social computing.
(Pierre recently donated $400,000 to sourceforge.net, and was hoped to be a keynote speaker at PyCon. Plone is the leading open-source content management system, and is written in Python.)

True, we could have our own Plone/Django/Turbogears/MoinMoin site, and being Python programmers, putting together our own website should be trivial. My take on meetup.com is that it is well-connected to the conscience of social computing, and it is an excellent choice for our web presence. (I know from a meetup.com source that they do use Python for some aspects of this site.) Leave the site administration to the pros. Hey, Plone, Django, Turbogears, Ruby on Rails -- they all use Trac for issue tracking instead of rolling their own.

-- drew