Lonely Lion

Last night’s meeting was pretty well attended. We had two speakers, David Beazley and Michael Tobis. David presented PLY, the Python Lex Yacc replacement. I was really looking forward to his presentation, and wasn’t dissapointed. David taught a compilers course at University of Chicago (not sure if he still does). He clearly knows how to present the material. Ever since I went to the Perl 6 track at YAPC, I’ve been interested in learning more about how programming languages are parsed and compiled. I’ve been having a hard time finding entry points. It’s a complicated topic with a steep learning curve. Although I’m not in any hurry, David’s PLY talk pulled a couple of ideas together for me. I’m interested in playing around with PLY, but also in exploring alternatives.

Michael presented a general talk on “Performance Python” along with an interesting video from NASA. I admit to not following his presentation as well as I should have. The PLY talk preceding it was an hour and a half, and required a lot of concentration. Michael’s talk was equally technical. At 8:30 at night, I was having a hard time pulling together the resources to really pay attention. Michael is a really interesting guy, and has a lot to say about Python in a scientific resource intensive setting. He’s working on projects that will have a real impact on our environment. It had to do with Fortran. I’m pretty sure.