EuroPython 2008 Report

EuroPython is the annual European conference dedicated to the Python programming language.

This year and last, the conference was held in the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius. Next year it will probably be held by Birmingham (according to tradition, the conference moves every two years).


Vilnius
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It is strange that I was the only speaker from Russia. This is strange because Vilnius is 15 hours away by train from Moscow and it is quite simple to obtain a visa (provided that there is an invitation).

Vilnius itself is a beautiful and friendly city to tourists. Particularly interesting area called the old city. It is listed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage; Next year Vilnius will be the European Capital of Culture (along with Linz, Austria).

If you are in Vilnius, I recommend to rent a bike. Almost everywhere there are bicycle lanes and "parking" for bicycles, in addition, you can ride the countryside by bike.

The conference

EuroPython is hosted by the Python community. The task of the conference is not only to organize reports, but also to provide an opportunity to communicate in an informal atmosphere to developers, the head of companies and researchers.

The conference itself lasted 3 days, the list of reports can be viewed here . Personally, I (considering the range of my interests :)) remember the following reports:

• Build an App in a Week by Marcin Kaszynski. The speaker described in detail how to create full-fledged applications on Django for a week, for example, http://webcomicspot.com .
• LAX - Logilab AppEngine eXtension by Nicolas Chauvat. It was about using Google App Engine with an extension created by Logilab .
• Discouraging the Use of Python by Harald Armin Massa, Funky presentation in the spirit of harmful advice about why you should not use Python in your company (although of course the author argued the opposite :)).
• Why is it a good thing to do? Lazy: Functional Programming with Python by Adam Byrtek. A report on which Python constructs can be used for functional programming. True, this report is more interesting from a theoretical point of view than from a practical one.
• Hans Rosling talked about why statistics should be publicly available. This report is pointless to retell, so good it is. Here is a similar presentation on Google Images, but a resource that vividly illustrates the theses of the report.
• And finally, the TV bridge with Guido van Rossum , where he spoke about the new features that will appear in Python 3000 .
  

After the conference, 3 days coding sprints continued. Sprint is a unique opportunity for open-source product developers to get together and do programming. At EuroPython 2008 there were the following sprints: Django , PyPy , Bazaar , Grok , cocos2d , MoinMoin . By the way, some projects, for example Django, PyPy, mainly develop just due to sprints.

I myself gave a talk about Clone Digger (an automatic duplicate code detection system). Slides are here . The conference arranged for me 100%, because, among other things, I still managed to personally communicate with the users of my program :).

A few photos here .