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EuroPython 2008: Python, Sun and the Stars

4 Comments Posted by Viktoras Agejevas on 2008-07-09

Well, the EuroPython 2008 is almost over…

Europython2008

I think that last year’s EuroPython 2007 was better, but this time there were some very interesting talks too (my opinion may be a bit biased, because I’m not primarily a Python programmer):

“Why I Want You to Use Eggs” by Ignas Mikalajūnas was interesting, I was only wandering why the Python community (which I consider smart) does not have a fully working repository of eggs and why is it still in so immature state. For example Java community has Maven which stands much further in a sense of adoption and maturity.
“Developing a Very Large Python Web Application LEAN style” by Steve Alexander revealed interesting points on LEAN principles and their usage and adoption at Canonical (Launchpad, Bazaar and Ubuntu).
Mind blowing keynote by professor Hans Rosling
“Core Python Containers — Under the Hood” by Raymond D. Hettinger. Great talk on the insides of Python containers and how to properly use lists and dictionaries to get the maximum performance.

Tim Peters: “Code written with Python dictionaries is a gazillion times faster than C”.

Raymond: “If you need a mapping but try something else, it will be dog slow no matter what language you use.”

The moral – use and love dictionaries :)
“Why It’s Good To Be Lazy: Functional Programming with Python” by Adam Byrtek. General introduction to functional programming and the possibilities of functional programming with Python.

Ok, so that’s the stuff I remember, there were more good talks I guess…

And of course there were some nice T-shirts and CD’s (CD’s are a bit out of scale):
Geeky T-shirts

Another thing – Sun was among conference sponsors. I think Sun has some serious plans about Python: they hired Ted Leung and Frank Wierzbicki (JPython, they did talks at the conference too), opened Python Developer Center + there are some other clues (Python support in NetBeans, etc.).

Interesting trends taken from ITJobWatch:

The charts provide the 3-month moving total beginning in 2004 of permanent IT jobs citing Java/Python within the UK as a proportion of the total demand within the Programming Languages category.

Java programming demand:
Java demand

And Python programming demand:
Python demand

Demands are quite different yet, but lets wait and see :)

Personal, Python, Software development europython, europython2008, programming, Python, sun, trends

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4 Responses to EuroPython 2008: Python, Sun and the Stars

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Bryan 2008-07-11 at 19:51:35
Not to be a jerk, but those job demand charts are intellectually insulting. The demand for Java in the UK has dropped from a high of about 36% to 25%. Not that this is rosy news for Java developers, but compare this to the Python chart — it rose from 0.5% to 2%. What a joke. In other words, there is virtually NO demand for Python, while 1 in 4 programming jobs are Java jobs.

I *like* python, but these charts don’t help the cause. Java is absolutely DOMINANT. Jython will do more for Python adoption than anything else I can think of.

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Adam Byrtek 2008-07-14 at 00:02:01
Nice to hear that you liked my talk!

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chinmoy 2008-07-22 at 13:44:26
I’m completely new to PYTHON. I’m a fresher in the software industry. I was trained in JAVA. But I was fascinated by PYTHON. It was a difficult decision to switch fro JAVA to PYTHON as JAVA has a huge demand. But I hope my stint with PYTHON turns out to be good.

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