Postscript to Warehouse Post!

Yesterday’s post described an important development project currently being undertaken by the PSF called Warehouse. This will redevelop and improve the Python Package Index, PyPI. I wanted to let you know about a particular issue that the developers are currently trying to solve–that of translation into languages other than English.

Yesterday, Donald Stufft wrote to the PSF community mailing list, soliciting help from Pythonistas with experience and knowledge in non-English coding, translating, teaching, or other relevant expertise.

The desire is to support translations of the PyPI UI (user interface). Most, but not all, PyPI content is in English, which typically isn’t and shouldn’t be a problem. But the UI aspires to be more welcoming to folks who either are not native English speakers, or may not speak English at all.

The current translation engine for PyPI is L20n.js, but the drawback is that this client-side engine only supports more modern evergreen browsers–those which continually and automatically update. There may be users who have older browsers, especially in non-English speaking parts of the world. 

One possible solution is to write a server-side implementation of L20n, i.e., to port it to Python. But this solution would involve taking development time away from Warehouse itself, as well as losing some beneficial features of client-side translation. Another possibility is to switch to Gettext, which PyPI had been using previously, but this solution is also considered less than ideal. 

If you can help with this issue, or would like to be better informed, please visit:

https://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2016-January/028134.html 

https://github.com/pypa/warehouse/issues/881.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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Welcome to the Warehouse!

Warehouse is the new codebase being developed to power the Python Packaging Index (PyPI). Python developers and users already know that PyPI is the official comprehensive repository of third-party open source Python packages (see Wikipedia). PyPI, maintained by the PSF, is where developers publish their software modules and from which package managers, such as pip, download packages. Given the important role played by PyPI, the Warehouse project is bound to have a huge impact on the continued use and growth of Python. 

While many volunteers have been working on the project, the biggest contributions have come from lead developer Donald Stufft and web-design specialist, Nicole Harris. Donald, based in the US, is a core contributor to PyPI (as well as to CPython, pip, virtualenv, Django & Cryptography), while UK-based Nicole runs a web development business, Kabu Creative.

The design goals, as stated on Nicole's website, were:

• To update the visual identity 


• To make packages more discoverable


• To accommodate the needs of both users and package maintainers 


• To give the project the same level of professionalism as a commercial project of the same scale 


• To ensure that the user experience reflects the Python community–a community that is welcoming, helpful and inclusive

Donald and Nicole have recently released a first look at the new design on the demo sites, Warehouse and Warehouse staging.

Looking great, thanks to Donald and Nicole's hard work, but there is plenty more to be done: writing code, writing the user guide (PyPUG), usability testing, and giving feedback. Details on how to volunteer and more info can be found on Nicole's site.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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2015 Community Service Award goes to Berker Peksağ

Last month I posted about the wonderful work of Terri Oda, who was recognized with a Community Service Award. Today’s post is about another 2015 Fourth Quarter CSA recipient, Berker Peksağ, who will be receiving a Community Service Award  … for his consistent volunteer efforts with pydotorg in 2015 (see Resolutions).

As many of you know, pydotorg has been undergoing renovation for a long time now. It has been, and continues to be, a labor of love involving many people (the Python infrastructure team, Marc-André Lemburg, and Benjamin Peterson, to name just a few). Still, the work done by Berker over the past year has been remarkable, resulting in significant improvement to the site and to users' experience. 

His contributions in 2015 include:

• 
  Helping get the second redesign working on the staging website
  
  


• 
  Working on the new job board with Marc-André Lemburg
  
  


• 
  Helping fix bugs on python.org (e.g., corrections to URLS for Python downloads; scrolling issues on landing pages and PEPs)
  
  


• 
  Making sure the site uses an up-to-date version of Django
  
  


• 
  Committing code to improve the user experience (e.g., adding a feature for updating board minutes on the site; making a change so broken images would not appear; updating the members' section to allow members to edit their profiles, and non-members to sign up; updating membership using django-admin so staff can download member files; updating the PEP RSS feed; updating Open Graph protocol on the website
  
  


• 
  Updating contributor documentation describing how to install the GitHub repo and how to contribute to the site
  
  


• 
  Improving the contributor experience (e.g., by switching from Chef configuration to Ansible)
  
  


• 
  Reviewing and merging community pull requests
  
  


• 
  Cleaning-up code
  
  

Wondering how Berker came to make so many awesome contributions, I asked him about himself and learned the following:

Berker is a software developer, living in Istanbul, Turkey, who first started learning Python in 2010. At the time he had been engaged in web development for over five years, but within a year of learning Python he built his first non-trivial Python project with a friend. 

Desiring to become more active in Python, Berker discovered pythonmentors.com in late 2011. This discovery gave him the courage and support to contribute to CPython. As he tells it: 

"I still don’t know what I was thinking since I [didn’t] even know enough Python at that moment :). I don’t remember all the names, but Antoine Pitrou, Brett Cannon, Éric Araujo and R. David Murray were really helpful. Brett also merged my first patch to CPython in early 2012."

Berker's enthusiasm and skills increased, and by 2014, he had become a core developer. Today he works as a Python consultant in Istanbul.

I  asked Berker what more needs to be done on pydotorg, and he replied 

"Our stack is little bit outdated (Python 3.3 and Django 1.7), and we have a few blockers before switching to the latest releases of Python and Django. We also need to improve community contributions. I have a few ideas, but I couldn’t find enough time to work on them."

So here’s an opportunity for those of you who would like to help!  And for everyone, please join me in congratulating Berker on his well-deserved award and in thanking him for his contributions to our community.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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Python-Cuba Workgroup

Today I’d like to report on some of the progress that has been made as a result of last years' controversy over an April 1st joke post about a (fictional) PyCon to be held in Cuba. As you may recall, the joke fell flat for many–nonetheless, the intent to instigate a real movement toward greater communication with Cuban Pythonistas, and perhaps to someday hold a conference on the island, was fulfilled beyond the authors' expectations! 

The first step occurred in May with the formation of a Python-Cuba Workgroup, which was recognized in June by the PSF board as an official workgroup with a charter. Since some group members already had contacts with Cuban programmers, the workgroup was able to begin a healthy collaboration. In addition, several Cuban Pythonistas made contact with us after the April 1st newsblog post. Discussion and analysis of issues, including internet access in Cuba, how to accommodate a multi-lingual group, governmental involvement and obstacles, etc., began in earnest over the summer. 

Thanks to the hard work of many, including Kirby Unger, David Mertz, Roberto Rosario, Steve Holden, Luciano Ramalho, Pablo Celayes in Argentina, Olemis Lang in Cuba, and dozens of other supporters and members, the group has recently gotten off the ground, and it looks like great things are about to happen!

Pablo Celayes deserves special mention for his efforts in involving his recently formed Python meet-up group in Cordoba, Argentina in the Python-Cuba effort (Cordoba, Argentina meet-up). Cuban developer, Alejandro Zamora Fonesca, is planning to visit Pablo and the rest of this group in Argentina this month to further discuss the growth of Python in Cuba. We look forward to hearing about that meeting on the Python Cuba mail list. In addition, Pablo will be traveling to Cuba in January, and again in March,  and hopes to have some sort of Python event organized for that time.

Indeed, Python events were already happening in Cuba prior to the formation of our group, and those of us in the US found that there were many Cuban Python developers eager to get more involved (for example, see Twitter). Newer groups, such as the Merchise Start Up Circle in Havana, are quickly growing and are busy planning future events. And plans are also underway to offer workshops on Python and Django  as part of the Cuba Free Software Conference, to take place April 25 - 27.  This large, international event, sponsored by The User Group of Free Technologies in Cuba (GUTL) and The Best of Open Techonologies in Germany (BOOT), is currently looking for speakers and mentors, so if you’re interested, please contact Pablo Mestre (pmdcuba at gmail.com).

These are just a few of the many ideas that are beginning to take form, and I’ve mentioned only a few of the many people involved. But the excitement and momentum are truly building. The Python-Cuba work group communicates by mailman listserv. Please read the archives and subscribe to the list if you’d like to help.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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Google Summer of Code–Terri Oda gets CSA award!

At the latest PSF Board of Directors' meeting, it was decided that a 4th quarter Community Service Award will go to Terri Oda for her work as the Python Coordinator for Google Summer of Code. 

Terri Oda

For those of you unfamiliar with GSoC, it is a program that began in 2005 that allows students to be paid to work on open source projects over the summer. Their motto is Flip bits, not burgers. The students must apply to the program and are then matched up with a mentor from one of the many sponsoring organizations. The PSF has been proud to be a sponsoring organization since 2005. Thus far, there have been over 8,500 students from over 100 countries and over 8,300 mentors from over 109 countries who have participated in GSoC.

According to their website, the program, in addition to the $5,500 USD stipend, offers students 

exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

In fact, the program has so far produced more than 50 million lines of open source code!  

Prior to becoming the PSF's administrator, Terri had worked as a mentor for Mailman, the GNU mailing list manager written in Python, and for Systers, an email forum for women in computing. Nonetheless, when she took over GSoC in 2013, she found the ramp-up to such a huge responsibility to be terrifying. That year, the Python umbrella organization included 19 sub-orgs, 87 mentors, and 36 students selected from over 100 applicants. For this year, the summer of 2015, there were more than 70 students who worked on Python projects with the help of over 100 Python mentors.

Fortunately Terri is not alone: 

… my co-admin Meflin [James Lopeman] takes on a huge amount of work when it comes to getting ideas pages set up, and my [other] co-admins [including Florian Fuchs, Kushal Das, and Stephen Turnbull] help out where they can too. (And we're always looking for more help!)

Terri and some of the Python Mentors

I asked Terri if she could tell us about any of her students.

“I’ve had some amazing students over the years, but there’s one who really stands out for me right now: Abhilash Raj. Not only did he do interesting work during his GSoC summer, but he also has become a hugely valuable community member for Mailman, working on continuous integration, contributions, and mentoring. We convinced him to let us fly him from India to Montreal so that he could attend the PyCon sprints last year, and it was really awesome to finally meet him in person! He’s been a real catalyst to keep Mailman development moving over the past two years, and it’s a real treat to have him as part of the Mailman team!”

Although Terri laments the fact that, as administrator, she has less time to work one-on-one with the students, she is able to keep informed via the student blog posts. One of Terri’s favorite posts 

was from the bravest student I’ve ever seen: she talked about how, upon getting commit access to her project’s repo, she did the thing that everyone fears: she accidentally trashed it. Most students wouldn’t even want to admit that, let alone write a blog post about it, but she was great and wrote a post not only about making the mistake, but about how she learned to fix it. Every time I think that I’ve made an embarrassing commit, I think about her bravery and honesty as inspiration for how to recover gracefully. 

Terri loves the fact that the GSoC gives students a way into open source, but she likes to point out that it’s not the only way. She herself got involved in open source as a teenager, then with the help of a friend, she was able to find a rewarding job as a security researcher for Intel’s Open Source Technology Center. So she advises her students that there are numerous paths to take.

My very first contribution to Mailman was actually a tiny image, not code at all! GSoC is a great program, but you don’t have to wait for the well-known path to be open; you can always blaze your own. Or sneak in the back. ;)

To read more about Google Summer of Code and the many terrific student projects, see: 

Google Summer of Code 

PSF and GSoC

Python GSoC 

Student Blogs 

Terri's Blog

Terri's pics

The PSF wishes to thank and congratulate Terri, the other PSF admins, and all those who make GSoC such a terrific program. We also urge participation – if you’d like to become a mentor, or have project ideas, please contact Terri (terri on Freenode IRC, terrioda at gmail.com).

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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Meet the Coulson Tough Elementary Python Club

As we all know, one of the PSF’s main purposes is to educate and advocate for the use of Python. What makes us so successful in this area is the enthusiasm with which the community is willing to share its time and knowledge. For me, hearing these stories is the best part of working with the PSF. We have recently heard from an educator in Texas who is seriously changing students' lives by teaching them to code with Python. She is Fifth Grade Science Teacher, Melissa Dylag, of Coulson Tough Elementary School, a K - 6th school in South East Texas.

Melissa’s adventure started in 2013 when she was approached by a parent who urged her to introduce her students to the world of coding and computer science. Using the non-profit Code.org  tutorial, "Hour of Code,"  Melissa taught each of her fifth grade classes for three days. Melissa inspired Technology teachers Noreen Reid and Shelley Moya, who in turn taught other students; by last year, almost every student in the school (about 1000) had completed an hour of computer science instruction via the free website.

Coulson Tough Python Club 

The students' response was fantastic, so Melissa wanted to do more to empower her students. She recruited the help of her son (a recent computer science graduate and now a Silicon Valley software engineer) to develop a full intro course using Python. According to Melissa, Python was a good choice because it offers my students everything to build a proper foundation for future computer science instruction.

Melissa, along with helpers Noreen and Shelley, are learning Python as they go. They teach about 30 students, an approximately equal mix of boys and girls in 4th, 5th and 6th grades, every Wednesday morning before the regular school day. Kids and teachers in the Python Club are loving it–they’re even making T-shirts.  

Children are coming to school over 45 minutes early in the morning to code. We have a line of cars at 6:50 in the morning for students that can’t wait to come in to code. PYTHON is a huge success and I am turning children away because we don’t have enough computers in the lab to accommodate them all.

Melissa shared with us some of her recent Python Club lessons lessons.  Please take a look--I think they're terrific. (I was especially impressed with the wisdom of one of her early slides: The biggest challenge in coding is to learn how to make changes and how to recover if the changes fail.)

6th grader Payton Gwynn

The parents are also thrilled. One parent emailed that her 6th grade daughter …has really enjoyed learning programming. She takes a picture of what she does on Wednesday mornings and can’t wait to show me what she has created…. I love that this club is exposing girls to programming.

Melissa plans to expand to offer two classes next year: an advanced class so that this year’s students can continue, and another introductory one. She needs to get approval from her administration, but she is enthusiastic and determined.

I want to do what is best for the children. We all love PYTHON and we are thrilled to share what we are learning… We are pumped to be a PYTHON school.

Please join me in thanking Melissa, her helpers, students, and all the teachers like her. We are pumped to have them as part of our community!

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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PyCon Japan 2015: A Success

Last month PyCon Japan took place from October 9 - 12th at the Tokyo International Exchange Center Plaza Heisei. The PSF has recently received a report from the Chair, Takanori Suzuki, and it appears that the conference was a great success. 

As a bit of background, the first PyCon Japan was held in 2011. The conference was a one-day affair with talks comprising three tracks. 247 people attended. Each year since then, PyCon Japan has grown in size and complexity. Last month’s sold-out conference had 602 attendees, with 80 people attending tutorials, and more than 50 staying for a fourth day to participate in Sprints. 

There were 43 sponsors. Sponsoring at the Diamond level was the Japanese firm MonotaRo. Other sponsors included PayPal, O'Reilly, CodeIQ, JetBrains, Nikkei, and the Japanese online marketplace, Curama. The PSF was happy to contribute as a Gold level sponsor.

There were 32 talks–11 given in English and 21 in Japanese–covering a variety of topics, including Pandas, Data Analysis, Metrics, Grep, Asyncio, Translating code into non-English, Erlang, and more. 

There were two keynotes–one in English by PSF Fellow, Hynek Schlawack, entitled Beyond Grep: Pragmatic Logging and Metrics; and one in Japanese by Haruo Sato, entitled Possibilities of Python, which was also the theme of the conference.

There was also a panel discussion on Diversity and the Future of the Community. Due to outreach efforts, the Japanese Python community has become more diverse – more women are participating in programming, as was clear from the groups represented on the panel: Moderator, Makabi Love, of PyLadies Tokyo, was joined by representatives from RailsGirls, Java Women, Django Girls, and Women Who Code in a discussion about how to increase diversity.Rounding out the conference were a poster session, jobs fair, lightning talks, and a children’s workshop. An additional feature of the conference was an official chat session, set up in both English and Japanese for participants to communicate with each other.

Slides and videos from conference talks can be viewed here,  and at The Possibilities of Python.  For more photos, see PyCon JP Photo Album.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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