Web Development
PyCon 2017
By Jacob Cook
PyCon Canada is soon upon us, and the national Python conference of record will be held in Montreal this year, from November 18th to the 21st.
As a software company well-anchored in the Python and Django communities in Montreal, Savoir-faire Linux will be sending a large contingent of employees to attend. The first two days of the conference include keynotes, talks and coding tutorials which cover some of the newest and most useful developments in the Python universe and in software development more generally. On Sunday the 19th at 11:50am (Abstract here), I will be addressing the conference and giving a talk on how to quickly create Django applications that utilize the dynamic front-end power of React. With a stellar speaking lineup announced and 70% of tickets already sold, this year’s PyCon Canada promises to be the biggest yet.
Free Software Projects and Communities
#Hacktoberfest or how a dormant Free Software project is now more active than ever
By Samuel Sirois
Istvan Szalaï and I are attempting to restart the development of a Free Software project that we started last summer but is presently inactive. This project is called RingMe.js. In order to motivate ourselves a bit more to make some contributions to the project, Istvan proposed that we create some issues in the project as opportunities for contributions to Hacktoberfest by DigitalOcean. What started out as simply being a use of “gamification” to motivate ourselves to put more effort into the project became a magnet to some small contributions by passing strangers that helped solve some pressing tasks, bugs and necessary improvements that were marked with the tag #Hacktoberfest. In fact, we were surprised to find that the contributors took time to propose quality code (Check out the code here: savoirfairelinux/ringme.js).
Why has this been such a success?
A few possibilities:
- The tasks, bugs and new features are simple, precisely-worded and not overly broad in scope (thanks to Istvan);
- JavaScript is considered a “sexy” programming language in 2017;
- The codebase is sufficiently young and unique to be easy to understand for newcomers, and it’s also easy to propose coherent solutions;
- The README, CONTRIBUTING and issue template files are present and well thought-out (thanks to Emmanuel);
- The project maintainers (Istvan and I) try to respond to contribution requests and questions within a period of 48 hours;
- #Hacktoberfest has become a popular Web development event within the open source community.
Thanks to:
Thanks to Istvan for having come up with the idea to mark our issues with #Hacktoberfest. Thanks to Jacob for having helped us effectively evaluate some pull requests due to his knowledge of the modern JavaScript ecosystem. And thanks once again to all contributors to the project, including (at press time):
Mobility
Secret: Psss… Have You Heard about Android View State Storing?