Linden will be our star student again, continuing with Django in "Teach Me Django Forms". Django is Python's most popular web framework.

We invite those of you that know something about Django to attend, to answer Linden's questions and show off your stuff!

And the rest of you that also want to learn about Django are invited to participate.

For an example of how this teaching technique works, check out http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com/2008/03/teach-me-twisted.html.

-Bruce

NOTE THE CHANGE IN TIME FROM THE LAST MEETING! THIS IS NOW AT 10:00AM.

We're moving to weekly Saturday meetings! I don't expect everybody to make every meeting, but try to make as many as you can. We will skip the Sat of the microcontroller meeting, so we'll have 3 (sometimes 4 maybe) sprints per month now.

This will be an all day sprint (till 5pm or so) where we all roll our sleeves up and dive into the compiler project.

There is much to do as we prepare to take our next major step forward. There will be opportunities to help out on many different levels, from GUI work, to testing, to refactoring compiler code. If you have an older board (e.g., the Diecimila, rather than the newer Duemilanove), please bring it to help out with the testing.

The GUI is based on wxpython, which you will need to download before the meeting from www.wxpython.org.

You will also need the mercurial source code control system which can be installed through the package manager on Ubuntu, or Windows users use tortoise-hg which can be downloaded from http://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/stable/wiki/Home.

If you want to join this compiler project, you will need to also join the google code project at http://code.google.com/p/tampa-bay-python-avr/ and the discussion forum on google groups at http://groups.google.com/group/tampa-bay-python-avr.

This time, Linden will be our star student, leading us in "Teach Me Django". Django is Python's most popular web framework.

We invite those of you that know something about Django to attend, to answer Linden's questions and show off your stuff!

And the rest of you that also want to learn about Django are invited to participate.

For an example of how this teaching technique works, check out http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com/2008/03/teach-me-twisted.html.

-Bruce

This will be an all day sprint (till 5pm or so) where we all roll our sleeves up and dive into the GUI for the compiler project.

The GUI is based on wxpython, which you will need to download before the meeting from www.wxpython.org.

You will also need the mercurial source code control system which can be installed through the package manager on Ubuntu, or Windows users use tortoise-hg which can be downloaded from http://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/stable/wiki/Home.

If you want to join this compiler project, you will need to also join the google code project at http://code.google.com/p/tampa-bay-python-avr/ and the discussion forum on google groups at http://groups.google.com/group/tampa-bay-python-avr.

This is an opportunity to get your hands dirty with Python in an environment with other Python developers. We're using the Mercurial (hg) Distributed Version Control System (DVCS), on Google Code. So you'll also get some experience using a DVCS system, Google Code, and participating as a first class member of an open source project. The work flows and thinking are quite different for hg than subversion, and the group dynamics are different for open source vs. a commercial enterprise!

Our project is developing a new programming language for microcontrollers (initially targeting the AVR processor). All of the compiler and IDE development will be in Python, since it all runs on the PC.

This new language will explore concepts like allowing the programmer to write "functions" that act like little compilers, to allow them to create, for example, new types of control structures.

The compiler is also integrated into an IDE environment. Thus, some "programming" can be reduced to filling in a form in the IDE. This keeps the syntax that must be learned to a minimum.

The compiler keeps it's own information in the database so that it sees the "big picture", rather than only one function at a time. This information is also used by the IDE to provide the programmer with more information about the program, such as cross reference information and function execution times.

One of our goals is to put microcontroller programming within the reach of non-programmers.

This project has a little bit of something for everyone! There's scanners and parsers, relational DB, UI work, and compiler back-end work. And who knows what else as we get further into it!

If you want to join this project, you will need to also join the http://code.google.com/p/tampa-bay-python-avr/ on google code and the http://groups.google.com/group/tampa-bay-python-avr discussion forum on google groups.