[Baypiggies] Talk @ Baypiggies in Feb?

[Pete]

On Jan 17, 2009, at 6:24 PM, Shannon -jj Behrens wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Pete <pfein at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Hiya-
>>
>> I was wondering if I could give a talk at next month's meeting.   
>> It'd be on
>> my Factory module: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Factory/
>>
>> I gave this talk at Chipy a few months ago, and it was very well  
>> received.
>> It's about 1/2 hour long.
>>
>> Lemme know.
>
> I'm cc'ing the rest of BayPiggies:
>
> Your description sounded interesting to me.  Jim and Tony organize the
> speakers, and they usually try to line up people a few months in
> advance.  I'm not sure exactly when they have a slot for you, but you

I'm only going to be here through late March... given the change to  
the 4th Thursday, I'd need to do this next month (February) or not at  
all.

> have a +1 from me.  You might want to describe it a little more so
> that the other people on the mailing list can get excited and give you
> a +1 as well ;)

Here's an abstract:

----------------------------------------
Factory is an object-oriented approach to partial function  
application, also known as currying.

Python 2.5 added support for currying with the addition of  
functools.partial: http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/2.5.html#pep-309-partial-function-application

The Factory module is a more powerful implementation of this pattern.  
Some improvements include:
   - safer, as invalid arguments are detected immediately, instead of  
at call time
   - intelligent support for classes, instance methods & all other  
callables
   - bound arguments can be inspected and modified as attributes
   - several convenient methods for (re)binding arguments

Using Factories can:
   - simplify writing callbacks
   - reduce bugs in concurrent applications
   - provide easy lazy evaluation

This talk will demonstrate the Factory module and discuss its  
implementation and uses.  Familiarity with currying is helpful but not  
required.  More information is available at http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Factory/
-----------------------------------------

The talk itself consists mainly of a live demo of the module, followed  
by a brief review of its implementation.  It falls more on the side of  
"cool things you can do that are unique to Python", in contrast to the  
more typical "how to parse TPS reports in Python (or Perl or Java  
or ...)" .  As such, it's a good insight in to the power of Python for  
programmers new to the language, while providing plenty to keep old  
hands entertained. I presented this talk to the Chicago group in  
September and it was very well received, with one audience member even  
suggesting the module should be included in the standard library.

> Thanks for volunteering!

Sure.  $DIETY knows, I like to talk. ;-)

--Pete