Can You Defeat My Swordstyle?

I’m pretty pleased to report that I went 2 for 2 on talk proposals for PyCon 2009. The panel I submitted and the talk I submitted were both accepted for the annual Python Conference.

Panel: Functional Testing Tools

The purpose of this panel is to allow the maintainers to introduce (or reintroduce) their functional testing framework to the Python community, as well as to have a frank discussion about how externalities like Web development frameworks and AJAX have changed testing strategies. This should also be a forum for discussion about how to improve the challenging art of functional testing of web applications.

A Configuration Comparison in Python

When faced with the simple task of figuring out how to use configuration to your advantage in Python there are a myriad of methods. The purpose of this talk is to walk through the standard library modules and the popular Python Package Index modules comparing and contrasting configuration formats and the code that consumes them. Specifically, I would like to walk through the use of the csv module, the ConfigParser module, ConfigObj, lxml, PyYaml and SimpleJSON.

So I’m putting myself in front of my peers, allowing myself to be taped on YouTube but hey, I think I’m ready for it. I’m quite excited and giddy, and of course nauseated that I’ll have to prepare like a psychopath. ONWARD!

As an aside, I think the thing that made me smile were the reviewer comments that were left by program committee members for both talks. A sampling:

Fan-freeking-tastic.

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Very good proposal. Championing it enthusiastically.

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Awesome.

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Not only will this talk teach a useful subject, it has a side effect of teaching some commonly used things: csv, xml, jason.

I feel config files make code easier to test, something beginners need to do more of. And they make code easier to use, obviously a good thing.

Very nice proposal.

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This is a good outline that will be relevant to a variety of Python users.

I would also consider it worthy of a 45-minute time slot if the speaker would like to go into more detail and compare other ConfigParser-like libraries.

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A useful talk; “how should I handle config files” is something of a FAQ.