Sunday, September 21, 2014

RocPy!

This passed Tuesday I got to attend a RocPy group meeting at the University of Rochester with my Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software class.  The meetup took place from about 7-9pm and details on the group can be found here: http://www.rocpy.org/

The meetup was extremely fun and equally as informative.  There were several lightning talks given by members of the group.  I found these presentations to be interesting because I am not a big user of Python, but I got to see what Python can be used for.  I learned how helpful Python can be as a programming language and I also learned how many different ways Python can be used.  I was also shown some ways in which Python can be used in a similar fashion to other programming languages such as Java or C.

I did find it difficult to comprehend some of the topics discussed in the meetup because I really don't have any knowledge using Python, but it was interesting to get a glimpse of how the members of the group utilize Python.  A lot of the meetup involved discussing new topics in the Python realm.  I found these new features to be cool, and I like to see how programming languages evolve over time.

One thing that I found especially intriguing was the hacks and tricks that some members of the group showcased in lightning talks.  For example, one member showed how he was diving into Markov Chains: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain through programming.  He then showed how the Markov Chains worked with his blog WuPotus which is an awesome Tumblr that mashes up speeches by Barack Obama and Wu Tang Clan lyrics.  Check out WuPotus here: http://wupotus.tumblr.com/ .  I found this to be hilarious, but on a more serious security side, another member of the group showed how to hack websites on Git using an exploit he found involving (I think) the .git folder.

In terms of recommendations for getting more people involved in the club, I found the more humorous or more hacking related projects to be the most interesting.  I found that the group really does not appeal heavily to people who don't have any interest in Python programming, but for people who are interested in getting involved in the Python community, the group is fairly appealing.  I enjoyed the lightning talks, but I agreed with what one participant said in that it would be cool to have work sessions where members can come to work on their projects and get help on problems they are having.  I think this would really strengthen the community and help out a lot of people.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the RocPy meetup, and although I don't know how interested I would be in getting involved in the Python User Groups, the experience definitely made me want to get more involved in groups that focus on programming languages that I do make heavy use of.

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