Today was the first day of Kiwi Pycon 2011.

This mornings key note from Jeff Rush on meta-programming in python was intense but very good. The concept of meta-programming is interesting. The way you can change a what a function does and not even modify the function the file the function is in. But instead by using a meta class you can change the output of the function or the whole function itself.

Here is a link with some more info: http://nz.pycon.org/2011/aug/18/magic-metaprogramming/

The talk from Malcom Tredinnick about behaviour driven development was interesting because it wasn't so much about developing application but it was about testing and the different types of testing such as unit tests etc.

There was also a talk from Olly Betts and he was discussing how the they use SWIG to create wrappers for python and perl etc. That are used for bindings to native C apps.

They also had Lightning Talks were you get up on stage and you have 5 minutes for a talk. One of the guys Christopher I think it was did a talk with some slides about Python Job Security. Now you really had to have been there but it was funny as hell. Basically all the things that you need to keep your job and it all centred around writing code that only you can understand. One of the recommended things you can do is come up with a naming convention only you can understand. And how you can use meta-programming to redirect calls to the standard python lib to your own custom function. Hopefully someone filmed it and if so I will find it and post the link.

Overall it was a good day.

Happy Coding Laters