Brian Dorsey's lab notes

Beginning iPhone development

I got an iPhone a few weeks ago. This week, other plans fell through, and I found myself with some extra time. I decided to see if I could make a basic iPhone application in a week. But, I’ve never done any desktop GUI programming, don’t know Objective-C, and have never done any mobile dev. Should be interesting. ;)

First two days of iPhone dev. OK so far. Given where I’m coming from, I’m feeling pretty good. The first day doesn’t really count, just a bit of preparation, installing the SDK & signing up for a developer key, lots of hoops to jump through, but it’s been easier than I expected.

I also put out a call on twitter for newbie iPhone recommendations and got several good ones:

• Scott Blanksteen and Aviel: Check the Stanford iPhone App programming class: http://bit.ly/rsPQn
• Dave Peck: pick up Dave Mark’s beginning iPhone book by Apress. Also: read apple’s overview guides and crank through their sample code.

I grabbed a copy of Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK. It seems perfect for me. If you already know GUI dev, interface builder, Objective-C, etc, you’ll find it slow. But for a newbie like me, it’s perfect. (Looks like there is an updated version of the book coming out soon: Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK)

Big thanks to the Walk Score guys who were gracious enough to host me for a day of co-working at Front Seat HQ today. I worked through the first few chapters of the book. Thanks to Dave for helping me out with newbie questions.

It’s pretty uncomfortable fumbling around as a beginner, but it’s good for me, and I’m enjoying myself so far. Looking forward to tomorrow!

Presentation Camp Seattle 2009

I went to Presentation Camp Seattle a few weeks ago. It was pitched as: PresentationCamp is an ad-hoc gathering of passionate folks who want to share, interact and spread the love around the topic of presentation design and delivery. It’s for anyone interested in public speaking, pitching and presenting.

I had a great time. I’m a big fan of these topic specific ad hoc events. It’s always amazing to me what people bring when you provide a space, a specific time to meet and then step back to see what happens. Huge thanks to Kathy Gill for organizing and everyone who helped make it happen.

It was an unconference, so the exact schedule got worked out that day, but I think this is pretty much what happened: Schedule

Here is the path I took through the schedule:

Why your talk sucks: and what to do about it.
(Video: Part1 Part2 Part3)

Scott is a bestselling author and pro speaker currently writing a book about public speaking secrets. He’ll cover the mistakes even pros make, how to avoid them, entertainingly explain the last research on public speaking fears, and how to make great presentations every time. Scott Berkun

How “Ignite Seattle” became a worldwide phenomenon - Brady Forrest (Video)

“(presentation + networking + viral content + economic development + diversity engine)”

Telling Ain’t Persuading (Video)

“Case studies in controversial/Socratic presentation methods. How books like Ken Bain’s “What the Best College Teachers Do” and the ASTD’s “Telling Ain’t Training” showcase proven ways to present more compellingly.

Presentation Catastrophes - a conversation (Audio)

“A conversation with a few people about their personal presentation catastrophes and what we can all learn from them.”

PyCon linkdump

If you’re not into Python, skip this.

Here’s a huge pile of things I ran into or was reminded of at PyCon this year. All are things I plan to go back and check out at some point.

• Jitter (/jay-it-er/) is a presentation library built on and with jQuery.
  http://aminus.net/wiki/Jitter

• Dowser: a CherryPy app that displays sparklines of Python object counts, and allows you to trace their referents. This helps you track memory usage and leaks in any Python program, but especially CherryPy sites
  http://aminus.net/wiki/Dowser

• Okapi: an in-browser API browser.
  http://aminus.net/wiki/Okapi

• Introduction to Python Profiling
  http://us.pycon.org/2009/conference/schedule/event/15/

• PlayerPiano - running Python doctests in a fake interactive shell.
  http://code.google.com/p/playerpiano/

• The Status is Not Quo - We are a group of developers, primarily using the Python programming language, who are interested in making the world a better place through software.
  http://www.thestatusisnotquo.com/

• sqlpython -a command line for sql queries, etc.
  http://pypi.python.org/pypi/sqlpython/

• web2py - fast, secure and portable database-driven web-based applications.
  http://www.web2py.com/

• Pinax - a collection of integrated, but reusable apps for the Django Web Framework.
  http://pinaxproject.com/

• webtest - functional test of webapps via WSGI instead of starting a server
  http://pythonpaste.org/webtest/

• argparse - like optparse plus handling positional arguments and supporting sub-commands
  http://code.google.com/p/argparse/

• cluemapper - multi-project trac server with integrated user experience
  http://projects.serverzen.com/pm/p/cluemapper

• blist - a list replacement with better perf on very large lists
  http://pypi.python.org/pypi/blist/

• ipaddr-py - new IP address library from google, will be in python3.1
  http://code.google.com/p/ipaddr-py/

• Some examples of calling windows APIs with ctypes
  https://svn.jaraco.com/jaraco/python/jaraco.windows/

• A code reloading library for Python - with safety checks. created be EVE guys
  http://code.google.com/p/livecoding/

• David Beazley’s tutorial on coroutines, as a doc
  http://www.dabeaz.com/coroutines/

• Understanding and overcoming the gender gap in computer science education.
  http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=8515&ttype=2

• PyFlakes a Lint-like tool for Python, like PyChecker
  http://www.divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodPyflakes

• PyChecker is a tool for finding bugs in python source code
  http://pychecker.sourceforge.net/

• Pylint is a python tool that checks if a module satisfies a coding standard.
  http://www.logilab.org/857

• Open-source projects under the “LAZR” umbrella maintained by Canonical. Check out the REST ones.
  https://launchpad.net/lazr

• A record-then-assert mocking library
  http://pypi.python.org/pypi/dingus

• SQLAlchemy’s preferred way to access MS SQL Server
  http://code.google.com/p/pyodbc/

• pythoscope - Your way out of The Lack of Testing Death Spiral
  http://pythoscope.org/

• Live compilation of RST on the web
  http://cometdemo.lshift.net:8080/

PyCon Wrapup

I look forward to PyCon every year. It’s a gathering of smart, capable, motivated and friendly people. It’s also the best run conference I’ve been too. Amazing work by a dedicated group of volunteers. Thanks everyone! I recommend checking out Ted Leung’s photos of PyCon 2009.

Tutorials

There were many excellent looking tutorials at PyCon this year. I missed them all, but they were recorded, and should appear online soon.

This year I gave my first tutorial, with Hogler Krekel. We collaborated on a pair of tutorials on the py.test testing framework. Thanks to all the SeaPIG members who came to an early version of this tutorial, your feedback improved it greatly.

• py.test I - rapid testing with minimal effort
• py.test I - slides and code
• py.test II - cross-platform and distributed testing
• py.test II - slides

My talk

I also gave my first solo talk at PyCon: How I Distribute Python applications on Windows - py2exe & InnoSetup. Slides and example code are posted there. It seems like it was well received and I heard several nice comments about it.

Talks

I enjoyed the talks I saw, but I spent nearly all of my time at the Open Spaces or in the hallway track. There were quite a few talks I wanted to see, but missed.

Open spaces

The Open Spaces were fantastic this year. On Saturday in particular, there were about half a dozen talks, BOFs and conversations running all day. The Testing In Python BOF session in the evening was amazing. It was a pizza and beer powered mini-conference. Lightning talks and alcohol are a perfect match.

Hallway track

The hallway track is always the best part of any conference. :) This year was no exception. Thanks for all the great conversations everyone. A big thanks to the video volunteers as well - knowing that talks will be online later allowed me to relax.

Sprints

At the time of writing I’m still at the sprints. So far, I’ve been working a bit with other folks, and a bit on some of my own small projects.

• py.test plugin - figleaf - trace code coverage of your unit tests
• setup this blog
• py.test plugin - resultdb - save the results of each test run to a local sqlite database
• a bit of hacking on Noonhat.

I’m already looking forward to next year!

I’m also trying to convince myself that I can somehow afford to go to EuroPython. Anyone up for sponsoring my airfare? I’ll sprint on whatever you’d like. ;)

First Post! :)

I’ve just started a blog, and this is it!

The basic plan is to treat this like a sort of lab notebook. A place for jotting down ideas, things I’ve learned, the results of experiments and what I’m up to.

The hope is that it’ll help me clarify my thoughts, remember what I’ve been working on, be interesting for you and help connect people who are interested in similar things.

Thanks for reading!