QCLUG Wiki

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june meeting:
  intros:
    - there was at least one new comer and several old timers who decided to show up today, welcome!
    - we had one open bsd user (that's new...)
    - one suse user... bob i'm pretty sure...
    - a ubuntu user, mint, deepin, etc, etc.
  meeting topic: "Getting Started with Python Programing"
    - the presentation appears to center around flask which is a popular lightweight python based web framework that does many things
    - python has packages, which is a collection of python modules
    - pip is used to install said packages
      - is a package manager similar to a Linux package manager such as apt-get or yum
    - virtualenv is a tool to create isolated python environments
      - this is basically a way to keep from breaking your system python environment and to give you application its own namespace
      - it is also a package that can be loaded with either pip or the os package manager
    - python terms
      - argument - value passed to a function
      - immutable - an object with a fixed value. immutable objects include numbers, strings and tuples. Example: key in a dictionary
      - mutable - an object that can change their value but keep their id()
      - statement - part of a suite or block of code. a collection of if, while or for expressions
      - class - a template for creating user-defined objects
      - decorator - a function returning another function, usually applied as a function transformation using the @wrapper
    - flask
      - based on werkzeug toolkit and jinja2 template engine
      - homepage - http://flask.pocoo.org
      - werkzeug is a WSGI utility for python
      - jinja2 is used in many python projects, similar to django templates
      - routes - specific commands are executed by flask when you access a flask router (eg. /dosomething)
      - templates can be created with logic (such as iteration) in them.
      - variables can be added to the routes for sending data between client and server
      - several examples were showed and well all tried very how to explain how decorators work... i'm not sure we did a good job or not because they are mysterious to be honest...
      - mike showed a simple https example with flask
      - he then showed some example code that was used to create a simple dropbox-like example
      - for a simple way to "test" your code try pythonanywhere.com
        - there is a free tier that allows you to try their service or you can pay for more usage...
    - after that there was conversation about various other python topics such as the benefits of packaging, requirements.txt, console scripts, pep standards etc.
    - then we all talked about GitHub and what our favorite GitHub alternative is.
    - we all voted that gogs was the best in favor of gitlab and Launchpad (not sure if Launchpad even a fair comparison but hey).

Link to Mike's GitHub Page