Thinking about moving my blog...

Over the Christmas break I moved my website that sat on a Google sites page to my own server and did this mainly to learn Django. I'm now really happy with my personal site (modulo css which I'll fix when I have time) and like the workflow involved with updating the underlying database and the templates taking care of everything (a lot of my students in particular have commented on the ease of access to teaching resources on there).

I'm thinking of moving this blog over there too.

The way I see it there are good points and bad points to this.

Here is how I see the bad points:

• It'll be 'hard': blogger just takes care of everything for me.
• I have a modest number of readers and it would be a shame to 'lose' them.
• Disqus.com comments are great but I'm a huge +Google+ fan and like the interaction I get on comments with the +Blogger / G+ thing.

Here is how I see the good points:

• It'll be 'hard': I have a slight addiction to putting myself out of my comfort zone so learning how to set up my own RSS feed (which in practice should take 20 minutes of googling) would be good fun. A part from that it will actually be very easy.
• I'll have more control: I've had issues with +MathJax not playing nice with +Blogger so if it's all on my server I won't have these problems.
• I'll prefer the workflow: at the moment I write my posts in markdown, pandoc them and then copy the html and fix it in +Blogger. With my own site, posting will be a simple git push away...

On reflection I think the only real bad side would be through potential loss of interaction / engagement but I also think that by simple sharing on Twitter and G+ not much would be lost.

Perhaps I'm wrong, if anyone has moved their blog and could offer me some advice that would be great. Also, how important is the RSS feed nowadays (personally most of the blogs I read get pushed to me by social networks and/or Google Now - I wonder how many people wouldn't have read this if it hadn't gotten to them via RSS)?

My students write about their first Python conference

Last week I wrote about my impressions from my first Open Source Software conference (OSS): https://djangoweekend.org/

It was an awesome conference but the highlight for me was seeing 3 of my students take full advantage of the event. I asked Matt, Alex and James to write a bit of a guest post for this blog about their experiences:

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Here's what Matt had to say:

"Having never been to a conference like this before, and with only a few months of coding experience under my belt, I had no idea what to expect from Django Weekend Cardiff. Despite this I had an incredible weekend. Everyone that I met and talked to was friendly and more than willing to answer my questions. 

While some of the talks went a little over my head, the clinics were very helpful in getting me started with Django. I even felt confident enough to give a lightning talk, that gave me the chance to voice my opinion on computing with regards to education, and how it had helped me over the few months I was leaning it as part of my undergraduate course for maths.


Overall I had a great time, and will definitely be keeping an eye out for Django Weekend Cardiff 2015."

Matt's lightning talk was recorded so as soon as it's online I will be post about it. He did an awesome job.

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Here's what +Alex Carney had to say:

"I first became aware of the open source scene when I was in Year 7 and my dad installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my ancient laptop in a bid to keep it usable. I slowly became more and more fascinated on what software I was able to download for free and have a play with, from creating animations with Blender to messing around in GIMP and to hear him say that it was made by normal people such as ourselves I was blown away thinking how on Earth could people like my dad and myself create such wonders?

Well needless to say it reignited my desire to learn programming, I had dabbled with Pascal and BASIC beforehand but I couldn't get much further than a series of print statements and lost interest. But then to discover Python, a language with syntax that was actually readable to someone just starting secondary school was amazing, slowly I was able to teach myself parts of it in short bursts over the years, before dropping it when I was in Year 11, to learn C++ mostly forgetting about Python.

Fast forward to September 2013, when I started my Maths degree at Cardiff Uni, and I finding out that I would be taught Python as part of the course was like being reunited with an old friend. But this time there was a major difference I was actually using Python. Back when I was teaching myself I never had any concrete goals or deadlines, I would follow one example before swiftly moving on to the next without stopping to apply what I had learnt. So naturally it was hard to maintain focus and I never produced anything worthwhile. 

However being set tasks to complete was great as I was finally applying my knowledge I had gained over the years and was able to appreciate how useful being able to program is, once you start thinking like a programmer the only limit is your imagination - Oh! and of course how powerful your computer is...

I can't thank Vince and the School of Mathematics at Cardiff enough for sponsoring me to go to the conference because it made me realise a lot of things. Firstly is that there really is a thriving welcoming community on the open source scene. I was always vaguely aware that it existed as I trawled through forums and mailing lists looking for solutions to problems I was having, but something always stopped me from joining in. I was thinking that even though it was open there was some mystical entry barrier that you had to pass before you would be accepted.

However by going to the conference I was shown the complete opposite. Nobody so much batted an eyelid when they saw me, some student only just able to scratch the surface of Python's power and knowing absolutely nothing about Django. Moreover they wanted to speak to me, they wanted to hear about it from a beginner's perspective, they wanted to know what it was like learning Django for the first time, what could they do to make it easier for me to learn? While having a chat with one of the core Django developers I pointed out that I didn't find certain steps in a tutorial that clear and afterwards he went away and amended the tutorial clearing up the confusion that I had!

It was incredibly interesting to hear how other people have used Python in their work and I was blown away at the power of not only the programming language itself but the community as well. An example from a particular talk was the Astronomy community, how Python was able to help the community create a common standard for sharing data and how all the tools developed by individuals went on to benefit the community as a whole. Leaving researchers able to concentrate more on the science than the technical difficulties and headaches of having to deal with fragmented standards and datasets.

I want to finish by saying how truly inspired attending the conference made me and I not only want to thank Vince and the School of Mathematics for giving me the opportunity, but to thank Daniele Procida for making the conference a reality in the first place. I will definitely want to attend next year's and I'm even thinking of going to  PyConUK in September. I am yet to contribute to an open source project but I'm hoping that's an issue I can fix sooner rather than later."

Alex was one of the students in the class with the most starting knowledge; in fact he helped me win a bet with +Jason Young (that I would be able to get a student to use Vim before the end of the year: Alex used Vim from the start...). It's really nice to read that he found the whole conference interesting and more importantly inspiring.

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The final post is from +James Campbell but he has his own blog that I'd really recommend you taking a look at (James is also a rugby referee so he blogs about that as well). Here's the post he wrote about the conference: http://www.jamescampbell.org.uk/?p=417

If it's too much effort to click over to there here's a bit I stole:

"Today they were working on fixing bugs and reviewing code for the upcoming Django 1.7 release. However, despite how busy they were, whenever I needed a hand someone was happy to help. At one point I had Django core developers discussing the best way to solve one of my problems. These guys are some of the best in the world at what they do, yet they still found time to help a complete newcomer, and I’m really grateful to all those who did so."

My students and my first PyCon

A couple of months ago an email somehow found it's way in to my inbox mentioning a new user group that was setting up in Cardiff. This was from some guy called Daniele Procida. As a Python coder really enthusiastic to be part of the Open Source Software (OSS) community I thought this would be awesome so I've been along to the monthly meetings where all things Python and Django are discussed.

However many months later I got to attend my first PyCon (in fact a DjangoCon): https://djangoweekend.org/

Here's the programme that I carried around in my back pocket:

Professor Tim Phillips, the head of the School of Mathematics kindly agreed to sponsor 3 tickets for students on my Computing for Mathematics course. I gave 3 tickets to students as a reward for their individual coursework (James wrote about Markov chains and Snakes and Ladders, Alex about Fractals and Matt about prime numbers).

+Jason Young who has been my research undergraduate student for a couple of years now (and is a very able coder) attended and +Izabela Komenda (a post-doc) also presented some of her PhD work.

Here's a picture of my Cardiff students, Daniele and I:

It was great that so many sponsors contributed to the conference (full list here) and also that +Cardiff University supported the event wholeheartedly, Roger Whitaker (the dean of research for the physical sciences) even opened the scientific talks on Friday.

Frankly:

It was the best conference I've ever been to.


The atmosphere cultivated by the OSS community is really amazing. Everyone is really encouraging, understanding and just plain ol' nice.

From the scientific talks on the Friday where usages for Python in Science were discussed to witnessing what a 'code sprint' was on the Sunday: everyone was just exceptionally nice.

I learnt Django over christmas and the help people were willing to give (not once making my mistakes more than they were) was really cool.

For example this morning I sat down with Baptiste, one of the core Django developers and he really kindly answered all the (noobish) questions I had (before leaving today he actually gave me his card and told me to get in touch if I had any further problems with a particular thing).

That is just one example of the awesome atmosphere that was cultivated during the conference. The event brilliantly mixed advanced programming for one of the most popular web frameworks with accessible topics for every attendee. I think that this is something that is kind of inherent to the OSS community, you are encouraged to put yourself out there and potentially make mistakes.

For this reason alone I'm extremely glad that the 3 undergraduates got to attend the event. 

Fear of failure and mistakes is something that sometimes really holds students back. As educators it's very important for us to make sure students learn to embrace mistakes.

During one of the talks on Saturday a particular particularity of Django was being discussed and I thought to myself:

I wonder if my students will be put off by "how much they don't understand" and perhaps this will end up being a negative experience for them...

I could not have been more wrong, their attitudes were perfect. They realised that they were very much at the beginning of the road (some of them had not coded before October) and just took advantage of everything around them.

James gave a talk on the Friday which was great and Matt gave a lightning talk (less than 5mins):

They all spoke to the experts around them constantly and by Sunday were themselves writing Django apps. It was great to have +Robert Dragan of learnium help some of them debug their code on the Sunday.

In fact towards the end of Sunday James even had Daniele (a core Django developer) and Charlie (a super-duper really helpful and nice Django developer/person) helping him work on a site:

I won't write much more about the whole event but I'll just repeat something that Matt said during his lightning talk.

He started by saying that he was a bit dismayed when at the beginning of his degree he was told that he was going to have to learn how to code (my course is brand new), he then talked about how he thought +Sage Mathematical Software System helped him gain a better understanding of the prime number theorem but it was what he said last that was really awesome (a lot of other attendees commented on it):

"Why did I have to wait until coming to University to learn to code?"

(All the talks on Saturday were recorded so I really look forward to sharing his talk, it was very well delivered.)

This whole event was a really great experience for me but more importantly my students.

The conference will be running again next here which is awesome for my future students. Next time Daniele, (who is one of the most impressive human beings I've ever met) will have (at least) me to help organise the it.

I've already signed up for my next PyCon (http://pyconuk.org/) and more importantly I've asked myself:

"Why did I have to wait till now to attend an OSS conference?"