Lightning talks tuesday (djangocon.eu)¶

What I learned from tomatoes - Erik Romijn¶

Everyone knows tomatoes. And everone procrastinates. There are kitchen timers shaped like tomatoes and one of them inspired a time management technique: the pomodoro technique.

Make not just django more efficient, but also make yourself more efficient.

For instance, set a timer for 25 minutes and work on a task, then stop. Take a short break. Every 4 pomodoro periods, take a longer break.

He tried it and it was way easier not to procrastinate. After 25 minutes you’ve forgotten what to procrastinate on. And it is easier to keep on working despite colleagues: “gimme another 10 minutes” is easier to get them to agree to than “come back in 4 hours”.

It is simple! You can learn it in a five-minute lightning talk. Try it!

django-qmixin - Zachary Voase¶

https://github.com/zacharyvoase/django-qmixin, an app for extending managers. You can more easily add methods that are available on the querysets.

He showed some code, so just look at github for that :-)

Javascript the right way - Angelo Dini¶

Use semicolons at the end of your javascript lines.

No comma at the end of }.

Use braces, so no one-line IFs without braces even if legally allowed.

Use single quotes in javascript and reserve double qoutes for raw html attributes.

Reserved words can be used anyway with quotes around them.

Declare variables as global if you need them to be global.

Equal is not always equal. 0 == false, but 0 !== false. A triple equal also checks the type, not just the value.

Watch out for variable scope.

Javascript is case sensitive.

Dajaxproject - Jorge Bastida¶

http://dajaxproject.com is a set of easy to use ajax libraries for django.

django-ajaxice is the communication core. It aims to ensure uniform communication between the client and the server. JS framework agnostic.

It uses decorators to register view calls.

It can inject the correct js/css lines into your template.

Needle - Ben Firshman¶

Automated tests for css. https://github.com/bfirsh/needle

It needs a working selenium setup. Needle comes with a nose testcase. He showed a sample test that took a screenshot of the djangocon.eu homepage. The tests then compare the screenshot to a know good screenshot. (You can get it to create the screenshot itself, btw).

Syntax syntax syntax - Daniele¶

He used to be a theological teacher. Now he works on websites at a UK university. He discovered their web system was diabolical and a waste of everyone’s time.

He was eventually able to convince the university to ditch the existing system and go with django-cms. And he

Arkestra is what he was able to build himself by means of django-cms once he discovered he could program, too. And it fixes everything that was wrong with the old system.

Everything is entity-based. Every event is an entity and is linked with other entities. Buildings are entities. Key persons are linked that way. A massive list of entities.

When you look at a person in the site, the person is linked with events, a department, courses, etcetera. Looks good.

It is a big, robust system.

Skills: hiring in a nice way - Idan Gazit¶

Last djangocon he talked about a hiring website he planned, but that went nowhere. This has nothing to do with that.

Skills is his current project and it is real and it is his work.

The biggest problem in hiring is resumes. Everyone fills it with buzzwords as those are the things you look at. So you start picking resumes based on font size or so…

They’ve fixed this by looking at other sources. Repositories, online sites, stackoverflow, etc:

• Do you consume?

• Do you produce?

• Do you enjoy respect?

Please all look at http://bit.ly/skills-djangocon, they can use it for finetuning their process.

Their end report is a beautiful report with beautiful data that you can use for your hiring decisions. They’ll probably go live next month.

Making a small positive difference - Steve Holden¶

We can make a possitive diffence in many ways. Doing so is good for yourself and for the community.

Example: crap on the street. You can shrug your shoulders. You can dump some of your own trash. You can write a stiff letter to the council. You can also take a small positive action and clean it up a bit. That’s what he did yesterday.

It doesn’t solve everything and he didn’t do a perfect job. But he feels like he made a small difference and he feels more connected to Amsterdam.

In python, he improved one standard library module’s documentation. It even ended up getting him the “commit bit”.

So: do small positive things!