[Chennaipy] August Meetup - Minutes

[Ashok Govindarajan]

Thanks Azeez, for the detailed write-up.

Appreciate your enthusiasm and effort.

It was helpful for me. I got a good picture of what happened, in-spite of
not able to make it to the meetup.

Best wishes,
Ashok

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 10:57 AM, hafizul azeez <hafizul.azeez at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The non-stop drizzle, the quiet IMSc environment and vibrant pythonistas
> set the context and expectations for the August meetup. However, plans took
> unexpected turns when the speakers got delayed due to the drizzling rain
> outside and the traffic created by it. Vijay took the stage to engage the
> audience with round of introductions and a generic Q&A session on python
> and the community. All of them took the opportunity to introduce themselves
> and a few asked some interesting questions. With the speakers not turning
> up yet, Vijay announced a lightning talk session.
>
> Rengaraj from Zilogic systems took the opportunity to present an idea he
> was working with (DBus), explained the design and asked for feedback and
> contributions. Kudos to Rengaraj - though it was a lighting talk, taking to
> the stage with no slides and preparation within few minutes summons respect
> and appreciation.
>
> An introduction to Flask by Hafizul Azeez
>
> As an emergency talk, Azeez gave a brief description of Flask and how it
> can be used for rapid application development. Azeez highlighted the
> difference between the micro web framework, Flask and how it is compared
> with a batteries included framework like Django. He gave a brief demo of
> how a simple Flask web app looks like and explained the code behind the app.
>
> He also made slight changes to the code with the inclusion of html
> templates and how parameters can be passed from the client side to the
> server side thru Flask routes a.k.a end points. In the process, he said how
> the Flask framework supports a design pattern called MVT (Models, Views and
> Templates) and how it all works in orchestration to make the web app.
>
> He also gave additional inputs on extending the Flask app with Plugins and
> highlighted a few prominent plugins like FlaskWTF (for Forms),
> Flask-SQLAlchemy (for databases), Flask-Login (for managing user logins,
> authentications, session management and cookies) and few additional modules
> (like Jsonify). Overall, the session received positive inputs considering
> that it was planned to be a filler (till speakers arrive) lightning talk
> but turned to be a 20 minute talk.
>
> This talk was followed by tea and networking. The cool weather outside
> (something Chennai misses too often) and the hot tea and coffee inside
> added energy to the already pumped up pythonistas. Getting to know new
> people, shaking hands, answering queries, taking feedback accompanied with
> good weather - whoa, just awesome! Speakers turned up sometime back and two
> more talks to go as per schedule.
>
> Computer Vision with Deep Learning by Manish Shivanandhan
>
> Manish started with an introduction of deep learning and how machine
> learning and deep learning differs. Machine learning is more of recognising
> patterns and deep learning is more of learning about patterns. Manish
> covered the different types of learning - supervised, unsupervised and
> reinforcement and gave examples for each of these types; along with
> classification and regression and provided real life examples (housing
> prices, stock prices etc) to compliment the understanding.
>
> Coming to neural networks, Manish hinted various algorithms are used for
> deep learning and one of them being Neural networks. He also deciphered as
> to why Neural networks is getting so much traction these days!? - and
> attributed it to the increasing computer processing power and the exploding
> amounts of data.
>
> He also highlighted the use cases of Neural networks and its advantages
> and limitations. Prominent examples being:
> Computer vision - pattern recognition in images
> Creative usage - generating text/music/speech
>
> One interesting exampling Manish gave is the JK Rowling (Author of Harry
> Potter series) case and how Neural networks helped identify when one of her
> books was written in another pen name (which was not JK Rowling). This
> captivated the audience much more as this is some thing almost all of the
> audience can correlate with. He also stressed the importance of Neural
> networks in the health care domain in finding cure for diseases.
>
> He covered how neural networks can be used in Computer vision and deep
> learning. He gave insights into how to take a problem and represent it in
> numbers so that deep learning can be used. He also hinted that if any
> problem can be represented in numbers, deep learning can be used. He demoed
> with an image, flattening it and showing the numbers behind it and
> highlighted that with enough numbers and processing power, patterns can be
> learnt by Neural networks. He complimented that with the Prisma case study
> where researchers took a lot of art manually, scanned it and fed neural
> networks to learn how the great artists like Picaso would have painted the
> picture (the brush strokes, the pressure applied etc). So when an image
> (like selfie) is fed into the Prisma application, the computer generates
> the art form of the image- i.e. how the image would look like if it was a
> painting from Picaso and the likes. This further stressed how deep learning
> can be used and how neural networks can be trained provided sufficient
> clean data is fed into it.
>
> Finally, he gave an introduction to TensorFlow and its distinct abilities
> when compared to other frameworks like Theano. Manish finished his talk
> with resources and references for further exploration of Neural networks
> and details about his upcoming webinar. Oh yes, he answered a lot of
> questions on deep learning from an inquisitive audience who were awed by
> the potential of deep learning and bitten by Manish's enthusiasm.
>
> Behaviour Driven Development by Naren Ravi
>
> Naren provided the background of the talk with a short description of what
> Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) is all about - i.e. testing the code
> with the user in mind and meeting the expectation of the stakeholders
> rather than just testing the code.
>
> He started with the waterfall model, the advantages and it's limitations.
> He gave insights into why testing in the later stages of the cycle makes
> life difficult - if bugs encountered and to finally discover that the
> design itself is flawed bringing up frustrations.
>
> He then covered how the first optimisation on the waterfall model was done
> with testing the code and informing the development and how further
> optimisation was done to the waterfall model with both testing and
> construction (coding) done parallely. Though these optimisations were done,
> Naren stated that there was an inherent disadvantage that was left with -
> i.e. the design cannot be tested. The solution is to bring the design into
> the development i.e testing, coding and design all tested parallely which
> is the Test Driven Development (TDD).
>
> Naren then added that even TDD won't suffice as the requirement analysis
> stage is completely left out. He then questioned the possibility of scope
> (requirements) change and how the SDLC model would adopt it!? Bringing the
> analysis cycle into the above cycle of testing, code and design becomes the
> BDD, he concluded. This gave an overall picture of the BDD - testing (test
> cases) first, construction (coding) and the design and finally checking if
> all of it matches the requirements.
>
> He added that in some context, this is how lean startup works. Develop a
> product with a new feature, send it to market, get feedback and then add a
> new feature, send it to market, gauge the reactions and the cycle goes on.
> Overall, it was a well structured talk starting with the traditional
> waterfall model to TDD to BDD and what optimisations were made on the way.
> He answered a few questions later to help bring more clarity into BDD.
>
> The meetup ended with Vijay thanking the venue and networking over tea
> sponsors, speakers and the rest who made the meetup a successful event. He
> also asked attendees to register in the mailing list to keep abreast of the
> happenings in the Chennaipy community.
>
> Regards
> Azeez
>
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