Blue Sky On Mars

Thoughts on Building Software Products
December 28, 2008

A change to my blogging

by Kevin Dangoor

First of all, my blogging has been very sporadic of late. Well, it’s always been irregular, and that’s not going to change. I do plan on blogging more frequently than I have been over the past couple of months. I have recently concluded a very busy job search (more on that in a separate post) and can get back to a bit more writing.

Blue Sky on Mars (BSOM) has been my blog for everything for several years now. I’ve had lots of software development blog postings, but also have had articles about parenting, politics, music, money and, as you’d get on Woot, random crap. Not to mention things that originated on other sites like delicious and twitter. I want to change things on BSOM to make things more useful and predictable.

BSOM has been largely about software development. Now, it will be exclusively about building software products including software development and product management, possibly with some software process mixed in for good measure. Everything that appears on BSOM henceforth will be longish articles and commentary, all related to modern software.

I will still use Delicious to track interesting things that I find online, and Twitter for small, random bits of commentary. I use Friendfeed to aggregate all of that stuff.

Finally, I’ve started a blog over at KevinDangoor.com for all of the non-software stuff that had previously been here. I won’t be doing anything crazy like moving blog posts from here over to there, however… A lot of people find my writing via search engines and I don’t want to disrupt that.

To sum up: subscribe to BSOM for software topics, KevinDangoor.com if you’re interested in my views on other things, follow me on Twitter for the truly random or subscribe to my Delicious bookmarks for cool stuff that I find.

(By the way, there will be no change to my feed that appears on Planet Python which is focused strictly on my Python category.)

December 3, 2008

Beyond the Source: Growing Your Community

by Kevin Dangoor

I have just recorded a screencast version of my php|works/PyWorks 2008 opening keynote: Beyond the Source: Growing Your Community. They gave me the option to talk about anything I wanted to, and so I decided to do a talk on marketing of open source projects.

6 comments
November 8, 2008

Dinner Tuesday @ PyWorks?

by Kevin Dangoor

My flight to PyWorks arrives around 6:20pm on Tuesday, and I anticipate needing dinner after I get to the hotel. Anyone want to meet up for dinner there?

Update: I may not be coming in on Tuesday after all. We’ve got some illnesses going around in the family, so it’s looking like I’ll come in on Wednesday.

Update 2: I’m coming in today after all.

6 comments
November 2, 2008

Google App Engine Hack-A-Thon Ann Arbor 11/17

by Kevin Dangoor

I started the ball rolling on this a few weeks ago, and I’m thankful that some folks picked up that ball and ran with it. I’m reposting Matt Simmons’ announcement here:

The Michigan Python Users Group (MichiPUG) in conjunction with Google are happy to present: Google App Engine Hack-a-thon: Ann Arbor

What: An App Engine developer event for Google App Engine!

  • Learn about Google App Engine: We will have talks on the major features of Google App Engine at different points throughout the day. We will run through developing an app with the SDK and show you how to deploy and manage applications on Google App Engine.
  • Build With Us, or Build Your Own: You are welcome to bring along anything you can prepare ahead of time (sketches, designs, web page mock ups, etc.) and use the time and information provided to develop your idea into a working application, then share it with the world. Or, you can code along with us in building a Google App Engine application from start to finish.

Who: You! Your ideas and your enthusiasm complete the mix. We will assume some basic skills and preparation for the event, including an
existing knowledge of the Python programming language. We’ll provide power, copies of the SDK, and an awesome ambiance. Just bring yourself and your laptop. Some light snacks and beverages will be available, as will a pizza lunch. If you decide to bring extra food, please make sure it is computer friendly. :)

When: Monday Nov 17th, 2008 10AM-6PM

Where: Google’s Ann Arbor Office: 201 S. Division St. Ann Arbor, MI 48104

You can read more about previous hack-a-thons at the AppEngine blog
(http://googleappengine.blogspot.com)

RSVP for the Ann Arbor event with the link below.
http://hackathon.appspot.com/index.html?event=agloYWNrYXRob25yDAsSBUV2ZW50GLw2DA

Looking forward to seeing you there!

1 comment
October 30, 2008

Changes coming to Paver

by Kevin Dangoor

Paver is the Python-based build tool that I released several months ago. It uses a Rake-like approach; you create a .py file that is filled with “tasks” which are basically just functions that can be invoked from the command line. Paver has largely been focused on automating Python projects.

Last week, I got together with Marshall and Matt from Zattoo. They’ve been working on a tool called pytoss which is focused on deployment. There are two parts to pytoss: the library and the “tool”. The library is being broken out into a new project called CloudControl, and it provides all kinds of high-level, handy deployment goodies on top of Paramiko. And it’s liberally licensed.

There’s a lot of overlap between pytoss’ tool component and Paver. So, we got together to see what we can do about that. The two approaches were already quite similar. There are a handful of small differences, and I like some of the pytoss approach. At a high-level, here’s what’s going to happen:

  • the pytoss tool part will go away
  • Paver will become less Python project-specific (but won’t lose the Python project-specific features it has)
  • the small bit of magic that Paver has will go away
  • Paver will add some optional support for CloudControl for deployment
  • Paver will also inherit some nice features like the easy ability to run sub-builds (build other Paver-based projects)

These are just the changes that are in store based on the pytoss integration. There are some other cool features that I have in mind.

I have also decided to move Paver from Launchpad to Googlecode. I find Launchpad to be far more confusing, especially for a small project like Paver. Additionally, bzr’s svn plugin appears to make it so easy to sync with a central server that there’s no reason to make everyone use bzr. Those who want to, can. And those that are used to svn can use svn.

Paver’s official homepage is unchanged, there’s just a new project page, bug tracker and source control URL.

A big thanks to Matt, Marshall and Jonathan for CloudControl and for helping out with Paver!

9 comments
October 29, 2008

In the market for a job

by Kevin Dangoor

Short form: I’m looking for a job. Are you doing something interesting? And hiring? Send me email! kid @at@ blazingthings.com.

I’ve opened up my LinkedIn profile to make it easier to get a quick rundown.

I bring a lot to the table: 20 years of experience in product management, management and software development. Some of my work in Python is out there and well-known. In September 2005, I released TurboGears, which led to an interesting and fun flurry of activity for me (talks at PyCon 3 years running, plus talks at EuroPython, CodeMash and the upcoming PyWorks conference, the Prentice-Hall book with Mark Ramm, the self-produced and published DVD, etc). At Arbor Networks, I applied Python (and others) in many parts of their security product, and even convinced them to release TGWebServices, an open source library that takes the pain out of SOAP. And, this year at SitePen I released the Paver build tool.

Most recently, at SitePen, I was the Product Manager in an otherwise custom services company. I oversaw the launch of SitePen’s growing Support service, and the Dojo Toolbox, created in collaboration with Adobe.

Throughout my career, I’ve been taking collections of raw materials and turning out packages that customers can really use. In the earliest part of my career, I created insurance company billing software for doctors’ offices. The people using that software were decided non-technical. I had to quickly learn to speak their language, figure out what they needed to accomplish and then make it happen. I also had to help spark their interest in our product.

And, I’ve been doing that all along. My audiences have varied and my role has varied (sometimes I’ve been a manager with people reporting to me, other times I’ve been a developer on the team), but the product management aspect has been there all along. I’ve also spent a couple of years doing enterprise sales and have been involved in marketing along the way.

Of course, I’m also a very technical person. I did a lot of the software development on the SitePen products I was involved with. I have a ton of experience in Python (going back to 1995), plus solid experience in JavaScript, Java and Perl. I’ve been using relational and other styles of databases forever. I’ve been using some variety of *nix since the early 1990s.

I’m located in Ann Arbor, Michigan and I’m willing to telecommute (and have done so for 4 of the past 10 years).

There are many jobs out there listed on the various jobs sites, but I also know that there are plenty of great opportunities that are not listed on those sites. If you happen to know of one, let me know!

10 comments
October 28, 2008

Rapid Web Apps with TG in Chinese

by Kevin Dangoor

I just got a mysterious package in the mail from Pearson. It felt like it contained a book… and, indeed, inside there were two copies of Rapid Web Applications with TurboGears in Simplified Chinese:

TGinChinese.jpg

I can only assume that Benjamin T. Hamilton, who is prominently quoted on the front cover, is saying good things about TurboGears and Python :)

1 comment
October 28, 2008

Python without explicit self

by Kevin Dangoor

A month ago, Bruce Eckel wrote about wanting to remove the explicit self parameter from function argument lists in Python. Personally, I don’t mind the explicit self. To me, it makes it feel like all function objects are equal, even those that happen to be methods on classes. That said, Guido wrote an in-depth response, and I certainly recommend that you check that out if you’ve ever considered getting rid of the explicit self.

After reading Guido’s response, I assumed that there must still be some way to eliminate the need for self in Python. Python is an amazingly flexible language. Further, I assumed that somebody had already done it. And sure enough, Michael Foord wrote an article that includes a metaclass called Selfless. As I suspected, this metaclass had to resort to bytecode manipulation. You really can’t change a lot about code objects in Python. I have no intention of using Selfless myself, but the Byteplay library that Michael links to seems neat and interesting.

5 comments
October 21, 2008

PyWorks and php|works opening keynote

by Kevin Dangoor

We are excited to announce the keynote speakers for this year’s php|works and PyWorks conference to be held in Atlanta, Georgia in November.

In the opening keynote, Kevin Dangoor, the founder of the TurboGears Python web framework project and, more recently, the Paver Python build tool project, will be speaking about growing your open source community.

[From php|works/PyWorks Keynotes Announced ]

Though it’s been on the schedule for a couple of weeks, Elizabeth Naramore has officially announced that I will be giving the opening keynote at the first PyWorks conference (I’m not sure how many years php|works has been going). This is a cool, combined conference, and I wanted to pick a topic that I think is fun and will be useful to both Python users and PHP users.

If you’re looking for screenfuls of code, this is not the talk for you (my other three talks are more code-filled). But this is going to be a very practical talk filled with things you can do right now to bring more people into your open source projects.

3 comments
October 21, 2008

Dojo, DWR, freebies and me at the Detroit JUG tomorrow

by Kevin Dangoor

The Detroit Java Users Group is meeting out at ePrize tomorrow for a talk about DWR and Dojo. I’ve been wanting to learn more about DWR, so this is a good chance. I’ll be heading out there to the meeting and SitePen has provided me with some Dojo goodies to give away (t-shirts, books and stickers).

I hope to see you there!

3 comments