Sam's L33t Journal

I went to PyCon in Pittsburgh last weekend, once again traveling on my own dime and time, per the new way of things at Google. At least they comped me one of their sponsor passes for reg.

Cory Doctorow did the opening keynote, on his theory of the current malaise in the tech industry. Which was quite an opening to the conference: We'd like to thank our sponsors and now here's Cory Doctorow to rip them a new one. I'm a big fan of Doctorow, and think he has a lot of insight. I really do think tech companies have gotten themselves to a point in consolidation-friendly and competition-unfriendly political environment where not only are things getting shittier for users and other stakeholders, the companies have also really painted themselves into a corner and are suffering from stagnation (even in an environment where there's some really amazing development in technical capabilities). Doctorow highlights Jay Saurik's phrase about how the DMCA (and similar laws promulgated by treaty agreements and free-trade deals) prohibiting the circumvention of digital locks makes a de facto crime of "Felony Contempt of Business Model". Doctorow's suggestion that countries should retaliate against tariffs with IP liberalization instead of retaliatory tariffs (i.e. making it possible for their entrepreneurs and firms to compete with US big tech instead of just revenge-taxing their own consumers) is certainly an intriguing possibility!

I think the world Doctorow envisions would be so much better for a lot of people, including software engineers specifically. For those at startups, sure, you could actually get your "compete with the big players" start-up funded, for one thing. But also for those at big companies, which could actually compete with their rivals, instead of just carving out separate fiefdoms and taking occasional all-in/all-out-double-time shots at someone else's crown.

I got to spend a lot of time with my colleagues, especially meeting members of the new Python Team and catching up with members of the former one, many of whom seem to have settled into some really cool Python work at Meta (working on Instagram's high-performance CPython fork or the Rust implementation of their Python type-checker). It's so heartening to see people who enjoyed working with you and are happy to see you and would enjoy to work with you again. (Not that I don't get that on my current team, it's just very reduced.) And I ran into Itamar, a colleague back from my ITA days, and Allen Downey, my CS professor from Olin. Spent most of my time at the convention center, but got to take in a bit of local color. Ate some big sandwiches at Primanti's anyways.

I spent Friday morning in conversation with Cory Doctorow at the PSF lounge in the expo hall, wandered the expo floor, caught talks on new Python features that I hadn't read up on before (e.g. template strings, the effort to escape once and for all from the Global Interpreter Lock), heard about people's fascinating projects. All the talks will be posted to their YouTube channel over the next week or two. The Python community really is a pointedly liberal and activist one, too, there's a real insistence on "Python is for everyone". Python really did carve out a unique niche in its balance of usability and "batteries included" power.

After getting back: This week has been pretty busy with a lot of city and school events. This evening was Somerville's Slice of the City pizza-party get-together for our neighborhood. Tomorrow morning, Erica's class is participating in the Argenziano Wax Museum, an event where the third graders portray people from history (this year focusing on figures from the American Revolution). Tomorrow evening is Argenziano Heritage Night, a big cultural festival at the school that Erica looks forward to every year.

I went to PyCon 2022 in Salt Lake City this past weekend, the first in person PyCon since 2019. It was a bit subdued compared to the pre-pandemic norm, but still was really great to attend the talks and meet people, including some of my Python Team colleagues from my side-project work.

I'm certainly very grateful to Julie for holding down the fort while I was away.

I took the red-eye back Sunday night, didn't sleep at all, and was predictably wrecked this morning. Felt fine-ish after a few hours of sleep, but hopefully the jetlag won't linger too long.

In some ways there was something anti-climactic about this year's PyCon. The big event for 2020 in Python world was the final (so far as that can go for software) demise of Python 2. Was looking forward to the big Py2neral. But a 2020 gathering never happened, and in 2022 it seems like old news.

PyCon in Pittsburgh will be getting a bit of a do-over, which I am happy to hear. That was going to be 2020 and 2021, by 2020 the next site had already been decided for '22/'23. But apparently the organizers were not scared away and Pittsburgh will host PyCon '24/'25.

Last weekend, I was in Cleveland for PyCon, so Erica got to spend the weekend with grandparents. The conference was really good this year. I very much enjoyed talking to people at the Google booth in the expo hall. The keynotes were phenomenal. Russel Keith-Magee gave the opening keynote on Python's "black swans", a fascinating look at the future of Python, how strategic research and development might be supported in open-source, and the history of Perth, Australia. And on Saturday (unfortunately not posted, at least not yet) Shadeed Wallace-Stepter shared his life story as a reformed criminal turned Python programmer and entrepreneur, then Python luminary Jessica McKellar gave a talk about the intersection between the tech industry and community and criminal justice reform, describing her work with The Last Mile and urging the audience to "hire people with records".

We had Shabbat dinner with my family that Friday, and Anne and Isaac joined us as well (Dan was unfortunately out of town). Was very nice to catch up. I had a great dinner with my colleagues on Saturday, and went to the conference dinner at the Great Lakes Science Center on Sunday night.

We returned to town Monday. Erica must have had an exciting weekend because she slept on the plane, took another nap at daycare Monday afternoon, then fell asleep on her own at about 8:30. Though after that she was back to her usual schedule of never going to bed.

Not much else going on.

We got in a little Ingress on Wednesday evening in Quincy Center. Been a while since I was down there, the new Quincy Center plaza is gorgeous. We're going to the Ingress Anomaly in Chicago in two weeks, which hopefully will be fun.

And I've been playing a bit of Magic. The prerelease tournament for the new Magic set, War of the Spark, was two weekends ago, and after a slow draw in the first match, I was just barely able to squeak by with a winning record overall. Thinking the office tournament for the set will be fun, too.

More travel this weekend. This time, Julie and I are traveling separately: Julie (with Erica) went to visit her parents and attend a memorial service for her grandfather, I went to Portland, Oregon to attend PyCon for work.

This hasn't been the best conference trip for me. A combination of exhaustion, confusion, and generally being under the weather led to me missing almost all of the conference on Friday (though I did get some work done). Saturday I felt great and well-rested, but last night I had a hard time sleeping and an upset stomach, so I'm exhausted again. Jet lag seems to be hitting me a lot harder than usual. Still, it's a great conference and I'm glad I went. The Saturday talks were especially interesting, and I really enjoyed talking to people at Google's booth at the expo and meeting some of my coworkers from further afield.

I'm also glad I caught one of the Portland PyCons. I do like what little of Portland I've seen. The downtown seems so nicely designed, with it's square grid of streets and the streetcar system and just the right amount of height and density. The conference changes location every two years, and I missed last. PyCon 2018 and 2019 will be in Cleveland, which is less exciting than Portland, but convenient for me.

Drove out to Windsor Locks, CT for 9Pi-Con this weekend. Was really excited to be able to attend that again. Last year, they were on hiatus, the year before I had a schedule conflict. As always, it was a really relaxing and fun convention, good panel discussions, readings, parties, and games. Unfortunately, this one is to be the last in the series.

Last week, started a housing search. That continues this week. Hopefully won't be too long, it's really disruptive. We're working with a real estate agent, thinking of buying something of our own this time.

On an unrelated note, caught two movies in the past few weeks: Mr. Holmes was very good, Ian McKellen's performance as an aging Sherlock Holmes is brilliant. And Inside Out was great, well worth seeing in theaters. The advertising for that film looked pretty dumb, so I was surprised when it got such rave reviews, but it turns out that in addition to the visual humor and charming animation, it's a moving story with a huge amount of depth. It's a surprisingly high-theory movie for a family-friendly animated film. (One of the anthropromorphized emotions passes time reading from a shelf of mental how-to manuals, I wouldn't be surprised if that was an inside joke referring to some a shelf full of psychology textbooks sitting somewhere in the animators' office.)

Pasadena trip last weekend (a side-trip for Julie, on her way to Synberc) was really good. Got to play in one of the Ingress live events (a win for our team in Pasadena, though still an overall loss for this series). Enjoyed spending some time with Sean and Morgan (my sibs-in-law), catching up with some of Julie's old friends, visiting Caltech, drinking strawberry lemonade at the Caltech Athenaeum, and seeing some of the more touristy spots in LA. Was quite a shock to go from 20 degrees to 90 in the span of a week.

Got back to work in time to wrap up some end of quarter things before heading off to PyCon in Montreal next Tuesday. And I've made further conference plans to go to the European Lisp Symposium in London the following week.

Friday, I was struck down by a horrible stomach bug (or flu or something). The worst. At least it wasn't while I was travelling.

Today, I finally got around to seeing The Golden Compass, which I'd had out from Netflix on DVD for the last far-too-many months. I'll warn those who have read the book to not expect much depth in the adaptation and those who have not to not expect a lot of hand-holding on the exposition. Honestly, I think the movie is probably about as good as a movie that adapts that book into an under-two-hours pulp-fantasy PG-13 pic could be. The pacing is very tight, they have a very talented cast, and the visual style is spectacular. I enjoyed it.

Thirst Boston was last weekend. I didn't hear about it last year until it was happening, but from all the buzz among involved acquaintances on social media, it seemed like a cool event. This year I couldn't decide whether or not to go, but then Julie got us Saturday tickets last minute. It was a lot of fun, very interesting seminars/tastings, cool souvenirs, and really awesome after-party at Drink and Tavern Row. (I'm sure the rest of the weekend was fun, too, but the one day was a lot. But if I was to do it again I'd consider going for the whole thing and clearing my schedule.)

Got hit by a terrible cold and was down for the count Tuesday, but totally fine again by Thursday. At least it was brief.

On Wednesday, went to see Big Hero 6 at the new Assembly Row theater. Was my first visit to Assembly Row. While it does have that uncanny-valley "mixed-use development" feel, it at least has some good shops and restaurants, a more-luxurious-than-usual cinema, and a shiny new T stop on the Orange Line. (About the movie: It's awesome and you should see it.)

Work is very busy. I'll be in a new office next week (moving up two floors). Lots of people in the Cambridge office are shuffling to keep teams in proximity as the office continues to grow. It's a bit chaotic.

Tomorrow, I have some complimentary tickets (courtesy of Yelp Boston) to the Drink Craft Beer Fall Fall To Winter Fest.

In a week, I'll be going home for Thanksgiving break.

The Boston Festival of Indie Games was on Saturday, and it was awesome! The video game portion was good, but I spent most of the day in the tabletop expo, playing demos of prototype and pre-release board and card games. Played RE:VERSUS (pre-release version of an "evil rummy" set-making cards-with-numbers game with simple-but-fun mechanics and great card design), Grave Robber's Dilemma (prototype of a simultaneous-reveal strategy game with a bit of dark humor), Skyline (co-op 3D perspective puzzle game), Moonquake Escape (prototype of an elaborate board game, don't know how well-balanced the strategy was, but it certainly had depth and a lot of zany action, would make a good family game-night game), Mutiny! (a prototype of a game based on the pirate game, fun, though it will surely need some adjustments and a new name), Goblin Law (prototype deck-building and card placing game with goblins and explosions, a fun game), and Starborne (pre-release simultaneous-reveal mech combat card game, mechanics and flavor were great, really fun; I wish their website had more pictures and description but I am definitely jumping on their Kickstarter as soon as it's up). And I didn't have time to see the half of it, the expo was a very lively event.

Sherman Cafe in Union Square closed for good this weekend. I'll really miss that place. It was a wonderful venue, with some amazing food and coffee. A very sad occasion for the neighborhood.

I was also surprised to find that Tommy Doyle's in Kendall Square has closed for good, abruptly going out of business Thursday with staff only notified day-of. Their Harvard Square location closed earlier this year, but I'd thought the Kendall location was doing well. Apparently not.

The weekend before last, I was out of town at PyCon. It was fun representing Google at the career fair, and I enjoyed the talks I attended. I was able to work from the Montreal office that Monday before heading home. I see why people are so happy at that office, it's a neat little space with a small engineering team. Plus Montreal seemed like a pretty interesting and friendly city.

Some talks of note:

• Gary Bernhardt gave a talk on the history of JavaScript from 1995 to 2035. It is amazing.
• Julie Pagano (a fellow Googler) gave a talk on battling impostor syndrome in the tech industry, with advice more broadly applicable to developing your career and fostering participation in your workplace in general (with a shoutout to Hacker School's code of conduct, which is really good stuff).
• Hynek Schlawack gave a timely look at the state of SSL.

A larger set of talks and tutorials is up here.

This weekend was marathon weekend, yet another weekend when all the things happen at once. Bergamot serves an amazing Easter brunch.

Getting ready for wedding season. DJ and Michelle are getting married in two weeks, my cousin Ben's wedding is two weeks after that.

The situation in Ukraine continues to be messed up.

I made plans to go to PAX East and then realized I'd have to miss them to go to PyCon (decided to do the latter anyways).

I made plans to go to Pi-Con (was excited that was happening again after hiatus last year) but then had to unmake them because that conflicted with Sandy Island. I neglected to realize that "the last weekend in June" overlaps with "the week of July 4".

Argh...