[Chicago] Python at Big Nerd Ranch

[Brian Ray]

On Aug 30, 2007, at 11:42 AM, skip at pobox.com wrote:

>     Brian> I saw David Beazley is teaching a class at Big Nerd Ranch;
>     Brian> <http://tinyurl.com/2fzjox>
>
> We have one or more non-programmers on our team (no programming  
> background
> at all) who are interested in Python.  Dave's class assumes some  
> previous
> programming experience, preferably some O-O and some scripting.
>
> Any suggestions?

You can teach them, Skip!

One thing I noticed, is that some classes (not this one) are suffixed  
with "Bootcamp".

There still seems to remain a self-taught atmosphere around learning  
to Program with Python.  Certianly, some more progressive and IMHO  
ahead-of-their-times educators are teaching Python on a collegiate  
level. Although, there still remains some problems with corporate/ 
enterprises/business teaching and learning Python.

That problem is similar to the other problems with business use of  
Python--I so frequently complain about. For starters, business wants  
and needs a better high level language.  (I will not mention the  
problem with getting good Python candidates and employers together  
because I do not want to start another flame war, so ignore I just  
said that) Every business seems to already know they need to follow  
the popular trend of being more agile.  Still, then do not want to  
switch languages ever ten years: from Java to C#, for example. Some  
businesses remain blind under the illusion that languages backed by  
large business, like Sun or Microsoft, are somehow better.   OTOH,  
the big business too see the advantages in the base philosephies of  
the open source world--take open sourcing JAVA and the idea behind  
Microsoft's CLR, for example.  Python seems to be a perfect fit for  
so much, but the dots are not connecting themselves like we often  
wish they would.

So, how *do* we make Python classes available for business?  I write  
a commercial close sourced app that has a JavaScript API. That's  
right, JavaScript. We (before I was part of "We") looked at Python  
and it was too hard for the purposes we wanted.  Now, we do offer a  
JavaScript class where our clients send people to learn JavaScript.   
We have not interest in teaching JavaScript for anything other than  
our own purposes...  but, now we have our mailing list where people  
end up sharing their JavaScript code. Those business who wish to  
collaborate in a open-source-like way, see the benefit already.  I  
imagine the same thing would work for Python if we could just get the  
right PR and philosophies in the minds of the business types.  Maybe  
PyCon will help with this too.


Brian Ray
bray at sent.com
http://kazavoo.com/blog