[ Thanks to Aron
Trauring for this link. ]
No, it’s not a snake or the name of a British comedy group.
Python is one of the most useful, compelling and intelligently
designed programming platforms to have emerged into the computer
industry mainstream in recent years. It is rapidly gaining wide
acceptance and being deployed in major IT shops around the
world.
Software developers now have an opportunity to learn more about
this exciting platform from the people who created it in the first
place. The Python Software Foundation’s first annual Python
conference for developers, PyCon 2003, is a community-oriented
event that targets programmers working with the language — and on
the language itself. It provides opportunities to learn about
significant advances in Python development, to participate in a
programming sprint with some of the leading minds in the Python
community, and to meet fellow developers from around the world.
Python was originally created in the early ’90s by Guido van
Rossum as a language that could be used to teach the most advanced
concepts of programming to non-programmers. Over the past decade,
Python has grown world-wide into a programming language that is
used in mission-critical applications by major players such as
Google, Philips, Nasa, AstraZeneca, Industrial Light and Magic, and
Rackspace. Python is also used extensively in universities and by
many research groups.
Python stresses readability, simplicity and elegance. Says van
Rossum: “As an object-oriented language, Python aims to encourage
the creation of reusable code. Even if we all wrote perfect
documentation all of the time, code can hardly be considered
reusable if it’s not readable.” Python is also extremely portable.
There are currently identical versions available for nearly every
computing platform, major and obscure, from PDAs to mainframes.
Python is also an open-source platform, which encourages sharing of
ideas and code. These characteristics make Python an excellent
choice for enterprise application integration, large-scale web
development, Web services, XML processing, application scripting,
and even GUI development.
“We’re constantly amazed at the depth and breadth of our
customer base,” says Stephan Deibel, co-Founder of Archaeopteryx
Software, Inc, a leading vendor of Python development tools.
“Python is being used in just about every imaginable domain, quite
literally from soup factories to shipyards. Python is a solution
that every programmer should at least be aware of.”
The first PyCon will be held 26-28 March, 2003, at George
Washington University’s Cafritz Conference Center in Washington DC.
For those who want to get a hands-on opportunity to work on the
language itself with the core Python development group, there is
also a coding sprint before the conference, on Monday and Tuesday,
March 24-25.
Early-bird registration for the conference (until February 28,
2003) has been set at US $150. Subsequent pre-conference
registration will cost US $200; and the fee to register at the
conference itself will be US $250.
For more information or to register, please visit the PyCon 2003
website: http://python.org/pycon.
Interested would-be contributors can still contact the
conference organizers at to suggest a presentation or other
activities of interest to Python users and developers:
pycondc-2003@python.org
In addition to the Python Software Foundation, other sponsors of
the event are software companies involved in the Python community,
including Active State, Zeomega, Archaeopteryx Software, and
Zoteca:
- http://www.activestate.com/
- http://www.zeomega.com/
- http://www.archaeopteryx.com/
- http://www.zoteca.com/