pre-release: PyTexas meeting announcement

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Subject: 
ANN: PyTexas at Special Event Center Sat April 13, 9p


PyTexas
=========================
When: 9 AM Saturday April 13, 2019
Where: Special Event Center
The PyTexas Foundation was organized as a Texas non-profit corporation in 2014 and received its 501(c)(3) recognition in early 2015. Although we cannot guarantee that your contribution to PyTexas will be tax-deductible (we aren’t tax attorneys and just don’t know), you can rest assured that any contributions to the organization will always be used to further the common goals of the Texas Python community, and never for personal benefit.
https://www.pytexas.org/2019

Topics
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1. Welcome
None.

(Needs description.) 
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

2. Keynote: My Path to Becoming a Python Core Developer
Emily Morehouse-Valcarcel

(Needs description.) 
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

3. Egad! How Do We Start Writing (Better) Tests?
Andrew Knight

Some have never automated tests and can’t check themselves before they wreck themselves. Others have 1000s of tests that are flaky, duplicative, and slow. Wa-do-we-do? GOOD testing is hard but not impossible. Start with proven advice from this talk!
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

4. Intentional Deployment: Best Practices for Feature Flag Management
Caitlin Rubin

Feature flags can be powerful tools in mitigating risk in your development cycle: if you use them correctly. In 2012 one improperly deployed feature flag sent a $365 million dollar trading company into bankruptcy in about 45 minutes. So let's talk about how to manage and use feature flags in Python.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

5. Take Back the Web with GraphQL
Robert Myers

GraphQL is an exciting technology that can help simplify web logic. Most of the attention has been focused on client-side improvements. This talk will show how GraphQL can structure your backend logic to reduce the client-side dependencies or remove them entirely!
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

6. Making Games With PPB
Piper Thunstrom

Python and video games are both used independently to learn software engineering, so Python game frameworks have an important role in the software development space. Come learn how to make games in Python so you can level up, too.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

7. When Booleans Are Not Enough... State Machines?
Harrington Joseph

Booleans are great to represent single states, but when it comes to multiple ones, they are far from ideal. This talk aims to explore cases where booleans are not the right solution, and how state machines may be a better approach when designing objects that describe multiple states and behaviors.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

8. Building Docs like Code: Continuous Integration for Documentation
Mason Egger

Project documentation is easy to neglect. Keep your docs inside your source repo & learn how to automatically build & publish beautiful docs on every commit. Viewers will leave with a new mindset on how to handle documentation, tooling for this process, & an easy-to-implement method to achieve this.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

9. To comment or not? A data-driven look at developer attitudes toward code comments
Veronica Hanus

Every programmer has asked themselves “how many comments are too many?” To the newest programmers, comments may seem magical--a way of documenting without giving instructions to the computer. But commenting engages the same vulnerability as more advanced challenges (i.e. pair programming & code review) and is likely to pique the insecurity of many programmers (especially the copy-and-paste or tutorial-level programmer)!

While most of us agree that commenting is part of writing maintainable code, it’s very difficult for someone who has not yet worked in a community-reviewed codebase to know what is good practice and not. The answers that come back often conflict each other: Code should be DRY, but well-placed comments save future devs. How can someone find the commenting style that is best for them as they learn, grow, & contribute? My survey of 170 long-time developers, Computer Science majors, bootcamp grads, & hobby programmers confirms some expectations and brings others into question. Join me for a data-based chat about the biggest pain points caused by our attitudes toward commenting and the steps we can take to encourage a growth mindset and empower programmers of all levels.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

10. CUDA in your Python: Effective Parallel Programming on the GPU
William Horton

It’s 2019, and Moore’s Law is dead. CPU performance is plateauing, but GPUs provide a chance for continued hardware performance gains, if you can structure your programs to make good use of them. In this talk you will learn how to speed up your Python programs using Nvidia’s CUDA platform.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

11. Making Multiple Inheritance not work in Python
Andy Fundinger

This talk is a destructive examination of the workings of Python's inheritance model. We'll learn how it works by breaking it. After starting with a discussion of how we got to where we are, we'll then move on to the hooks that Python gives us to interact with it.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

12. Free yourself from your ORM with mypy!
Thomas Stephens

(missing the first few minutes of the talk.) 

Can you decouple yourself from your ORM while still maintaining safety and convenience? You can, and mypy can help! Learn how static type checking and functional patterns can help you write less coupled, more transparent and safer code, without an ORM.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

13. Lightning Talks


(Needs description.) 
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

14. Welcome
None.

(Needs description.) 
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

15. Keynote: The Zen of Python Teams
Adrienne Lowe

(Needs description.) 
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

16. Why Good Developers Write Bad Tests
Michael Lynch

Many skilled developers write beautiful code but horrendous tests. Worse, they're oblivious to the problem because their code seems to follow best practices. Come to this talk to find out why refactoring degrades readability, magic numbers are your friends, and DRY means DO repeat yourself.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

17. Cloud Made Simple with Serverless Python
Belinda Vennam

This talk will explore Serverless applications for python programmers. Serverless promises a number of benefits to developers, and this talk will cover some of those benefits as well as give the audience enough information to get started running Serverless python right away.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

18. Let's Take a Break: Python's New Way to Set Breakpoints
Brian Vodicka

Tired of using pdb? Want to dynamically switch Python debuggers? This talk describes the strengths of a few common Python debuggers, as well as Python 3.7's new breakpoint function.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

19. Machine Learning by Example
Gabriela D'Ávila Ferrara

Imagine you could easily use ML without having a PhD or having to mess with models or interacting with TensorFlow? Imagine ML working for your application, not you working for ML. In this session learn how to use ML APIs through demos to power your application and focus on what matters!
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

20. Introduction to Exploratory Data Analysis with the Sci-Analysis Python Package
Chris Morrow

Exploratory Data Analysis is an important step in data science and analysis. The PyData stack has many useful tools for performing EDA but the learning curve to use these tools can be steep. Sci-Analysis simplifies EDA by combining meaningful visualizations with the appropriate statistical analysis.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

21. Testing from the Ground Up
Aly Sivji

Tests ensure our program works as intended and that changes to the codebase do not break existing functionality. However, these benefits aren’t free; we need to have a plan to write our app and to test it. This talk will introduce concepts and techniques that can be used to write effective tests.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

22. Serverless Python: All Vapor or Are There Benefits?
Pavan Agrawal

Serverless has been all the hype recently, but cutting through the nonsense can be incredibly difficult. Serverless can be beneficial in some cases, but for others, it is not the right technology. Join this talk to learn more about the serverless paradigm, benefits, drawbacks, and when to use it!
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

23. Solving the "no internet" problem in Botswana
Erik van Widenfelt

In Botswana, we deployed our python/django clinical trial data collection system "offline" in 30 remote villages using our python module "django-collect-offline". We successfully complete annual household surveys in 12610 households over 4 years without reliable internet or cellular data services.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

24. 10 Years In Industry as a Minority Developer
Jessica Ross

Ever wonder what it’s like being visibly different in tech, whether female or minority, or heaven forbid, both? Find out in this talk! #9 will shock you!
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

25. Epigrammatic Python
Tipton Cole

A mildly humorous and historically reflective exploration of some of the common Rules of programming.  Most of them are Good Ideas - but there are limits as well as contradictions in those Rules. A fun and inspiring review of the Zen of Python, the DRY Principle, Fred Brooks, and more.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  

26. Raffle Prizes & Wrap Up
None.

Raffling off prizes from our sponsors & final words.
 recording release: yes license: CC-BY  



Location
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Special Event Center
http://library.austintexas.gov/rental/special-event-center
http://library.austintexas.gov/central-library

710 W. César Chávez St.
Austin, TX 78701
512-974-7400

https://www.google.com/maps?ll=30.265928,-97.75176&z=16&t=m&hl=en-US&gl=US&mapclient=embed&q=710+W+Cesar+Chavez+St+Austin,+TX+78701

About the group
---------------
PyTexas is the annual, regional gathering for the Python community in Texas. PyTexas is organized and run by community volunteers. PyTexas, like most of the Python community, is focused on providing a diverse and enjoyable experience for everyone interested in Python. Please help us do that by following the code of conduct.