The Austin Python Meetup Monthly Meetup

We typically have a main presentation or a series of lightning talks, followed by discussion and Q&A. There is a diversity of domains and experience levels represented, so come with your questions and be prepared to talk about how you use Python!

Talk 1: Meredydd Luff - Anvil: Full-Stack Web With Nothing But Python

Talk 2: Cheng Lee - A (Brief) Tour of Python 3.10

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Talk 1: Anvil: Full-Stack Web With Nothing But Python

Description:

Building a modern web app requires so much: HTML, CSS, JS, Python, SQL, React, Bootstrap, Webpack, Flask... What if we could build a better abstraction?

Our answer is Anvil (https://anvil.works): a full-stack Python environment where everything is a Python object, from your UI components to your database rows. In this talk, I'll walk you through how and why we constructed this new approach to the web.

We'll start with a question: Why is web programming hard? It's because your data takes so many forms: database rows, Python objects, JSON on REST, JS objects, HTML DOM, and finally pixels. Most of a web developer's job is translating between these awkwardly different representations. Frameworks like Django help, but now you have a stack of leaky abstractions: web frameworks, ORMs, JS frameworks, CSS frameworks, build tools... These frameworks help you go faster, but they double the amount you need to know!

So I'll show our stab at an answer: A framework where everything is a Python object, requests to the server are function calls, and Python is a browser-side language. Then I'll take you behind the scenes: I'll talk about running Python in the browser. I'll talk about RPC and security. I'll talk about full-stack autocompletion. There be live coding!

Speaker Bio:

Meredydd is one of the original creators of the Anvil web framework. He learnt to program with QBASIC, and still misses that accessible on-ramp into programming. He did his PhD in building usable programming systems, and has worked on projects from messaging apps to the Linux kernel. He’s based in Cambridge (the one on the Cam, not the on the Charles). In his spare time, you used to find him dancing ballroom and latin, or flying an aeroplane. These days, he enjoys a rich social life of staring at glowing boxes and talking to people who aren’t there.

Talk 2: A (Brief) Tour of Python 3.10

Description:

This talk will cover the major new features and changes in Python 3.10

Speaker Bio:

Cheng is currently a principal software engineer at Anaconda, and works mostly on conda development and packaging. Before joining Anaconda, he worked at a startup and at various universities developing data management and analysis software tools for high-throughput biology. He has been professionally developing software for ~20 years and using Python for about ten.