Announcements (Doug)

• Julython
• PyATL Ladies
• A contractor with too much work; hook him up w/ Matt (clay@daemons.net)?

file.readline() (Doug)

• I think this is about the hint param that came up on the core-mentorship mailing list.
• It appears the way the hint works is that it has a base buffer size and it uses the hint to figure out a multiplier to use on the base: if the hint is big enough to fit in 1 * base, then it reads buf_size bytes, if it is too big for 1, but fits in 2, it reads 2 * buf_size bytes, etc. (btw, it reads that many bytes, and then reads to the next newline, to be particular)

Crash Course in PyTest (?)

• What is it? A test runner (similar to nose?)
• By default, PyTest runs functions that start with test_
• Mostly relies on the built-in assert statement
• You can use the pytest.raises context manager to test that some code throws an Exception
• You can put your tests in the module with the rest of your stuff, pytest don’t give a…
• Doctests? pytest don’t give…
• “Sidecar” layout (test_X module next to module X)? pytest don’t… you get the picture
• The “Quarantine” layout: a separate tests dir next to your project’s primary directory.
• A pretty lengthy overview of mock right in the middle.
• It’s got coverage.py integration, which is nice.
• What about nose? It was more convenient for him when he was first getting started.
• It totally understands unittest-style tests.
• (in response to a question from Rick) It runs in two passes (collection, test-running), and you probably don’t want to have side-effects in your imports.
• It has some sort of profiling tools baked in, but not many details (pretty interesting, though).
• (Another Q from Rick): What about unittest2? It’s more convenient for him.

Headless Browsing with Zombie (Ryan Petrello)

• The goal is functional testing
• Not many options for headless browsing in Python
• He was inpsired by Zombie.js
• Fun JavaScript bashing
• I think I’d give this a look if I weren’t planning to look into PhantomJS (I ♥ WebKit)

A Short Introduction to PyGame (J. R. Rickerson)

• Interested in games as technology drivers (both hardware and software).
• PyGame wraps SimpleDirectMediaLayer
• Games are event-driven, and the core of the game is the Event Loop
• PyGame seems cool, overall. Way too much going on for me to do it justice.
• Katie Cunningham is doing stuff w/ Rogue-likes; I wonder how this compares with the Caves of Clojure thing.