EuroPython 2008, day 2

I skipped most of the sessions for the day as they didn’t seem even remotely interesting to me. But, the ones I did attend where really good.

Last nights partying kept me pretty much in bed for better part of the morning. Descriptor tutorial by Raymond D. Hettinger was very good and I think it was actually the first conference tutorial ever that actually teached me something about programming and Python in general.

There was quite a bit testing-related material on the Lightning talks. One thing I wrote down on my notes was the phrase “Given enough tests, all bugs are shallow” (originally from Linus Torvalds in a form “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”).

The keynote talk for the day was something that absolutely blew my mind. Hans Rosling talked about Gapminder and how statstical data and databases should be free. First thing that crossed my mind when listening to him was that “I wonder if Adrian Holovaty has ever talked to this guy — they’d have much to talk about”. If you havent heard about Gapminder or Hans Rosling before, you should definitely see his talk on last years TED conference. In Django-terms, thats some cool shit 🙂

EuroPartyPython 2008, night 2

Smile!

After Roslings inspiring keynote there was the conference dinner. We ate well and headed again to down town Vilnius. (Todays dream team was Edgars, Nicolas and me.) The two girls from last night showed up as they had promised. We had great time with them for a couple of hours untill they left early. We stayed at the bar and eventually hooked up with three cute Lithuanian girls. Lots of dancing, beer and fun until the bar closed at 3 am. What a great night — again!

The Art of Web Development

During the last few moths I’ve kept myself busy with Web development work. Dividing my time between running a company, music hobbies and my two cats, most days seem to run out of hours. But no matter how hectic my days get, I’ve still got the passion.

Finding a passion is important. There is no equally powerful driving force than ones passion. Recent discussions with an artist friend made me think about the choices I’ve made in my life. I realized that much in a same way that my friend has chosen to not sell out and paint something that everybody would buy, but instead express herself the way she wants to, I’ve chosen to employ myself and work only on things I really want to. It’s a road that seldom leads to big money, but for us being able to work on projects that we are passionate about is much more important than money.

I’m often impressed by the way the folks at 37signals design the details in their apps, and how Adrian Holovaty always finds time to tweak even the smallest changes to Django documentation to meet his high standards. This kind of commitment only comes from people who are passionate about what they do.

A programmer friend of mine once said that to him programming is poetry. I’ve come to understand that Web development is as much art as it is engineering; you have to have love in your product. And when you do, your users will feel it.