PySIG 26-Oct-2006: meld, Scite, subversion, lamda and cookies

[Ted Roche]

Eight Python enthusiasts waded through the challenging parking  
brought on by political candidates surrounding WMUR to attend the  
October meeting of the Python Special Interest Group at the Amoskeag  
Business Incubator in Manchester.

We started a trial of an early session with this meeting: show up at  
6:30 and it's open Q&A until 7 PM. There were a number of good  
questions, and the answers sounded pretty good, too!

I emceed the meeting, as Bill was one of the presenters, but Bill had  
prepared an agenda as well as handouts, so mostly I just had to read  
the script. Thanks to Janet and Lloyd for out-doing themselves with  
awesome cookes, muffins and tarts. Yum!

Lloyd Kvam of Venix did a great presentation on lamda, Python's  
inline function capability. We exercised a number of these  
capabilities, worked up a couple of examples on the fly and had some  
good "Ah-ha!" experiences along the way.

Bill Sconce's presentation was one of his "Python Development Series"  
discussing the environment for productive Python work. Bill demoed  
and discussed meld, subversion, SciTE, and how they tied into a tight  
development environment that saved neurons and timeslices by making  
the most common functions an easy-to-remember keystroke away,  
improving the ability of the programmer to stay in the flow of  
development. Bill had some great handouts, a link for which I hope  
we'll have soon.

The next meeting is the fifth Thursday, November 30th, to allow for  
the Thanksgiving holiday. Cole Tuininga will talk about his  
experiences with the epydoc system (http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/)  
and Bill Sconce will present Alex Martelli's slides from a recent  
presentation on "What's New in Python 2.5" Should be a good show!

Thanks to the Amoskeag Business Incubator for providing the  
facilities, to Bill Sconce for coordinating and promoting the meeting  
and to Alex Hewitt for the networking support!


Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com