Project night

Python Project Night
Come practice your Python skills on a variety of fun and practical projects specially designed for beginning Python programmers. Staff from the Boston Python Workshop will be there to help beginning Python programmers with language basics and practice projects.

Audience: everyone! We'll have something for all Python experience levels.

Signup
You must register for this event on the Boston Python Meetup.

Location and times
The 11th floor Commons at Microsoft New England, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142, from 5:30pm - 9:30pm on Friday, May 20th.

Food
Microsoft NERD is sponsoring pizza for this event. Thanks Microsoft NERD!

Wireless
The SSID is: CAMBRIDGE. Try to browse the web and you'll be redirected to a page to click through terms of service. The event password is bp520.

Projects
Need some project ideas? How about:

Learning Python

 * The official Python tutorial: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/. This tutorial is very comprehensive, but it sometimes throws in unnecessarily advanced concepts. This is a solid tutorial for people with prior programming experience, and is still a good tutorial for new programmers if you are willing to skip over the advanced concepts and come back to them later.
 * How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python: http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/. This tutorial does a particularly good job of introducing programming concepts and terminology.
 * Learn Python the Hard Way: http://learnpythonthehardway.org. Despite the name, some people find this to be a gentler introduction than the official Python tutorial.
 * An introduction to Python through writing games: http://inventwithpython.com/chapters/.

Practicing Python

 * Practice Python online with bite-sized exercises: http://codingbat.com/python.
 * Staff from the Boston Python Workshop will be here to help work through practice projects from the Workshop, including:
 * using the Twitter API to write parts of a Twitter client
 * wordplay and the power of regular expressions
 * programming graphical effects for a ColorWall
 * Practice writing code to solve a problem from scratch with the Scrabble challenge.

Projects and competitions

 * Contribute to an open-source project that uses Python. Developers from OpenHatch, Twisted, and other projects will be here. If you contribute to an open source project that uses Python and want to help new contributors, let us know in a comment!
 * Want to learn a Python web framework? Check out the Django tutorial: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/intro/tutorial01/
 * Do data analysis and graphing in Python with the matplotlib plotting library:
 * homepage: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/
 * tutorial: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/users/pyplot_tutorial.html
 * Use the DonorsChoose.org data or API to make discoveries and build apps that engage the public and improve education in America: http://www.donorschoose.org/hacking-education
 * Win $35,000 in prizes for using CDC flu data to develop an innovative app, data visualization, tool, or game: http://fluapp.challenge.gov/