A collegue (really a mentor) of mine knows Sharepoint like nobody’s business and she posted an interesting article this week about when moving to Sharepoint, there is a shift in the mindset how you look at and classify information.  It’s a quick point with a list of good references and I think it’s a good primer before jumping into Sharepoint.

This was a great talk where Malcolm Tredinnick spelled out what he’s looking for in Django patches and what to avoid if you don’t want your patch tossed out.  Although his talk was targeting the Django project, he really dispensed good advice for anyone maintaining software regardless of project, language or platform.  The room was completely packed!  All of the chairs and couches we’re filled and people were sitting on the floor and standing at the sides of the room.

You’re doing it wrong if:

• the word “print” is in your patch
• you don’t have a test (fail before, pass afterwards)
• you think “PEP 8″ is an energy drink (PEP 8 is the style guide for python)
∘ make your patch look like django style code

Create patches by running diff from the top of the repository to get all changes.  The svn add command works locally even if you don’t have rights to commit to the repository so files you add will be added to the patch.

“Code style is opinionated and yours doesn’t matter!”

What he’s saying here makes sense in any open source project.  There’s a style defined and you should not deviate from it no matter how much you like your own special coding habits.  You might get away with minute changes, but don’t push it.

“Read the contributing document.”

This seems to be simple and common sense.  Skipping over information someone has left for you is a recipe for confusion.

Some tips given on comments:
• comments should last
• comments should be correct
• comments should explain they “why”, we can already read the how in the code.

Some general tips:
• Fix problems and not symptoms!
• Research is not a four letter word.
• The crowd is smarter than you

And what I believe was his last advice for the talk (at least I stopped taking notes after this) was to contribute and keep contributing.  Even when your patches don’t get in, don’t get discouraged.

It was a good talk and the first time I had heard Malcolm speak.  He was very informative and encouraging.  Overall I liked it and it was one of my favorite talks besides James Bennett and Cal Henderson.

I’m sitting next to the creator of python and listening to the History of Django talk.  It’s very interesting to see how the Django framework morphed into what we know it today.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Guido Van Rossum just had an interesting side discussion about how Django should do things, making it easier to run on Google App Engine.  After seeing Guido’s talk, the latest backend changes to allow a non rdbms database and the side conversation, I think there will be many exciting developments in Google App Engine in the next year.

I’m here at the GooglePlex sitting a row away from the stage and enjoying the atmosphere.  It’s a great vibe here.  This does feel different than the Microsoft conferences I have been to.  Some observations so far is that the crowd seems a little younger for the most part and there is a comfortable atmosphere.  Of course there’s free food and drinks, free wifi, a great stage and screen for the presentations and the audio is flawless.  The only complaint I have thus far is the uncomfortable plastic daycare chairs.

Earlier I attended Guido’s App Engine keynote (blog post to follow later), and I’m now attending the High Performance Django talk.  I will try to make a post for each talk I attend.

Check back soon…