Python has been popular for many years, but now its popularity is growing even faster. What does the future hold for Python? And why is it becoming so popular among so many different groups? In this talk, Jessica McKellar describes the current state of affairs, and where Python is weak — and thus needs to improve, in order to attract new developers. She especially encourages people who love Python to contribute to the community, so that the language can avoid the fate of Perl, whose popularity has declined significantly in the last two decades.
Python’s decorators allow you to intercept the definition or execution of a function (or class), and to inject or replace the code with your own. This talk, by Colton Myers, introduces this powerful technique, stepping through its syntax and use in different ways. He also demonstrates use of the wrapt library, which makes it easier and cleaner to create decorators.
“Refactoring” is an important concept in software engineering. It allows us to change (and hopefully improve) our code, without changing what it does. In this (now-famous) talk, Katrina Owen shows us how refactoring is something that we can and should do often — and that it’s good for us, as well as for our code.
How difficult is it to program in-browser graphical games using JavaScript? I assume that it’s not that hard in theory, but that it will actually be difficult in practice. Mary Rose Cook wants to disabuse me (and us) of the thought that it’s hard to do, and in order to do that, she implements a Space Invaders game, in JavaScript, over the course of a single 30-minute talk.