New Year's Python Meme

As suggested by Tarek, and done by so many others.

1. What’s the coolest Python application, framework or library you have discovered in 2011 ?

Requests. I've dealt with Python's HTTP handling on numerous occasions, and most times found myself constructing an abstraction layer to deal with it. Requests provides this abstraction layer for pretty much all of my use cases. I'll give an honourable mention to Pyramid, because it allowed me to bring together my current use of Pylons and my past experience with Zope.

2. What new programming technique did you learn in 2011 ?

Sorting algorithms ;). On a more serious note, I started actually getting benefit out of Scrum, which is not quite a programming technique but definitely help my programming. On a related note, I learned the benefits of continuous deployment, and some of the techniques one can use to support that.

3. What’s the name of the open source project you contributed the most in 2011 ? What did you do ?

Python Web Client. But I built that myself. I did file an accepted (and quickly fixed) bug in PyDev.

4. What was the Python blog or website you read the most in 2011 ?

Planet Python. Pretty much my go to for Python, though I'm tempted to start reading Python Reddit (I've never used Reddit before).

5. What are the three top things you want to learn in 2012 ?

Chef (and related tools), gevent, Go. I'm also interested in (and more likely to learn) CoffeeScript and Node JS.

6. What are the top software, app or lib you wish someone would write in 2012 ?

• A web service mocking library. I've seen some promising signs in this direction, and I have cause to contribute myself to the effort.
• A self-replicating Python platform, that can deploy itself from device-to-device relatively transparently. I want to be able to say "run code X on instance Y", and not worry about any of the details of preparing Y or moving X to it.

If you want to participate:

• copy-paste the questions and answer to them in your blog
• tweet it with the #2012pythonmeme hashtag

Let me build you a web app/service!

So, according to my introduction, one of my goals for this project is to build a web app or service to demonstrate my skillset in that area. Unfortunately, it's turns out my idea for a web app has already been done, and is quite well-known (on the plus side, I now understand what 4Chan is). At the moment, I'm drawing blanks about what I should build, so I thought perhaps I could crowdsource that job.

So if you have an idea for a web app or service, but not the time or skills to get it started, or if you would simply like to collaborate with someone on it, post a comment describing your idea.

In general, I'm game for pretty much anything, as I'm confident I can learn whatever I need to. Some general parameters though:

• It's going to be in Python, built on Pyramid, using SQLAlchemy for models
• I will try to strip the idea to it's core, and leave others to make it full-featured
• I will try to make an appealing and usable UI, but again, it will be pretty barebones
• I'm going to blog about it, host it in github and make the code viewable by everyone
• If you want to collaborate:
• I'm open to hosting it elsewhere, as long as it's publicly accessible
• I will be a stickler in design discussion and code reviews

Finally, I will happily put it under any license you want and grant you and copyright or whatnot, as long as it doesn't prevent me from achieving my objectives vis-a-vis skill demonstration.