PyCon 2015

So I went to PyCon 2015. While I didn’t leave quite as inspired as I did in 2014 (when I discovered iPython), it was a great experience and I learned a ton. Once again, I was incredibly impressed with the organization of the conference and the diversity and quality of the speakers.

Since Mozilla was nice enough to sponsor my attendance, I figured I should do another round up of notable talks that I went to.

Technical stuff that was directly relevant to what I work on:

• To ORM or not to ORM (Christine Spang): Useful talk on when using a database ORM (object relational manager) can be helpful and even faster than using a database directly. I feel like there’s a lot of misinformation and FUD on this topic, so this was refreshing to see. video slides
• Debugging hard problems (Alex Gaynor): Exactly what it says — how to figure out what’s going on when things aren’t behaving as they should. Great advice and wisdom in this one (hint: take nothing for granted, dive into the source of everything you’re using!). video slides
• Python Performance Profiling: The Guts And The Glory (Jesse Jiryu Davis): Quite an entertaining talk on how to properly profile python code. I really liked his systematic and realistic approach — which also discussed the thought process behind how to do this (hint: again it comes down to understanding what’s really going on). Unfortunately the video is truncated, but even the first few minutes are useful. video

Non-technical stuff:

• The Ethical Consequences Of Our Collective Activities (Glyph): A talk on the ethical implications of how our software is used. I feel like this is an under-discussed topic — how can we know that the results of our activity (programming) serves others and does not harm? video
• How our engineering environments are killing diversity (and how we can fix it) (Kate Heddleston): This was a great talk on how to make the environments in which we develop more welcoming to under-represented groups (women, minorities, etc.). This is something I’ve been thinking a bunch about lately, especially in the context of expanding the community of people working on our projects in Automation & Tools. The talk had some particularly useful advice (to me, anyway) on giving feedback. video slides

I probably missed out on a bunch of interesting things. If you also went to PyCon, please feel free to add links to your favorite talks in the comments!