[python-advocacy] new Intro to Python talk

[Catherine Devlin]

I gave an Intro to Python talk last week at the local Perl Mongers'
meeting.  It was very well received, and I have a standing invitation to
come back and talk more Python anytime.  I've put a tarball of it at

http://catherine.devlin.googlepages.com/pyintro.tar

Feel free to reuse, modify, comment, vandalize, etc.  It's in Bruce, so
you'll need to set yourself up with that infrastructure if you want to run
it.  Does anybody know a better place where it should be uploaded to?

I decided to center the talk on a demo relying heavily on VPython, which I
saw for the first time at Richard Olenick's PyCon talk.*  I figured that
having something moving and pretty on the screen might help keep an
audience's attention.  Plus, with VPython, there's a nice intuitive feel to
it all - you show them setting sphere.color = color.blue and they SEE the
sphere change to blue instantly.

So anyway, the presentation gradually builds up a script that generates a
random solar system and turns gravity loose on the planets, introducing
Python along the way.  I'm planning to give it again next month at
Penguicon** in Michigan - hopefully the spacey topic will draw in some SF
fans who aren't necessarily hard-core programmers already.  Then, perhaps,
at Ohio LinuxFest, and... well, anyplace I can think of (suggestions are
welcome).

while True:
    centralOhio.append(Pythonista())

* - http://us.pycon.org/apps07/talks/#proposal_link_100
**- http://www.penguicon.org

-- 
- Catherine
http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com/
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