Lonely Lion

http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/

It was only a matter of time. Great great great!

At the state of Django talk on Saturday at Pycon, I asked what the status of Django on Jython was, as I think for guys like me (trying to explain Python and Django to traditional JVM-happy shops) that stack is going to get some traction. If I can tell someone that my crack team of consultants can build a full featured web application in record time, and deploy it in their existing JVM heavy infrastructure, I’ll turn some heads.

If I can turnaround and say, the exact same app will also run in your .NET infrastructure, now the heads are spinning off into the cosmos.

Python for the win!

Simon Wistow asks whether or not we need a better open source queuing system. My answer is yes. I’ve built two one-off hackish queuing systems for $work in the past three years, both of which used database tables as queues, both of which were only accessible by a language-locked api, neither of which was accessible by any sort of neutral service. Both had very specific tasks, hold tasks in a queue for offline (read: outside of a web transaction) processing.

Both jobs could have been fulfilled by a nice message queue service, but it didn’t seem like the effort was worth the payoff. That said, now that I’ve built two of exactly the same thing, I’m 100% of the belief that I’d love to have a easy to install web service-y queue (that isn’t owned by Amazon).

So, why the need? It’s sort of like the evolution of CouchDB & friends I wrote about back in December, all web programmers eventually are expected to be programmers, then they start examining the tools the traditionalists have built, and they question, “why can’t this be better?” Relational databases might not be best for web apps (I’m still not convinced, but for the sake of argument, go for it.) Full featured queue services might not be best for web apps. If for no other reason than they introduce a complicated system into your ecosphere for what is actually a very simple problem. I like Simon’s pointing at memcache and saying, “make a queue that works like that.” That would be pretty cool. I’m voting +1.

That said, like a good American I’m making this vote without fully examining all the candidates. Maybe the existing queues are simple enough…educate me lazy-web.

So, PyCon is over (for me). I wasn’t able to participate in the sprinting this year, probably a good thing as too many late nights make me cranky. All in all, I had a great PyCon, met a lot of interesting folks, learned some new stuff, and had a lot of fun. The sessions I attended were good, but the BoF’s really stand out for me this year. Especially the Netflix BoF and the follow-up data-visualization BoF. Both were small (+! Small BoF’s FTW!) and really got me thinking.

The conference itself was really well managed. Things ran smoothly, people mingled, sandwiches were eaten, and talks were given. Friday and Saturday night were both pretty late and beery, yet again proving that I’m 31 and have baby. My rockstar genes have seriously been damaged by fatherhood. As an aside, I’ve been giving a after-several-beers rant about how MySpace is the greatest thing since representative democracy for so long now that Atul Varma finally cut off further discussion until I blog the speech. It’s a pretty good speech, I’m not sure it’ll survive the light of day, but I’ll work on it soon.

The best part of PyCon, in my esteemed opinion, is the people you meet. I finally got to talk to Mike Bayer, whom I’ve often pointed out as “the most prolific Python library writer ever.” I’ve been a fan of Data Wrangling for a while, and had the chance to talk to its steward Pete Skomoroch. He led the Netflix BoF, and his colleague Chris Gemignani led the data visualization BoF. They work for Juice Analytics, which seems to be doing some really interesting work.

PSC (whom I work for), was a sponsor this year. We had some good conversations with people at our booth, and sponsored a dinner Friday night. It was sort of our coming out party, as we’ve been working pretty hard (though quietly) for the past year to establish a solid Python based consultancy within a 100 person IT firm. PSC has been around for 17 years, has a great group of traditional manufacturing clients, and has never been unprofitable. They saw opportunities in the Python world, and hired me last year to help build a team. We’re 7 developers strong as of this morning. That, coupled with 1040 attendees at PyCon this year (up from 600 in 2007) says to me that Python is really building a market here in Chicago and elsewhere. It’s an exciting time to be a Python developer.

Anywho, great PyCon this year folks…looking forward to next year already.

It’s started. We stuffed a thousand bags with thirty volunteers and seven pizzas. (Yes, it sounds like the volunteers and pizzas were stuffed into the bags, I realize this after having already written in. It’s a shame my backspace key is totally broken, so I can’t fix it. Also, it’s funny sounding.)

Anywho, Pycon is on! Hurray for Pycon!