Talks & tutorials

In this lightning talk, I hosted the first-ever Python edition of “Who wants to be a millionaire”.

In the fast-paced game I hosted, 4 volunteers tried to answer 4 impossible multiple-choice questions!

In this live-coded talk I answered the question of “how do you create an animation from first principles”?

We started out by only being able to draw pixels on the screen and by the time the clock was over, we could animate the rotating spiral that is shown on the side.

An attendee wrote

“The talk was really dynamic and the idea of programming while talking was awesome.”

This was the third iteration of this talk of mine, which I presented to cover someone who had to cancel their scheduled talk.

Because the talk slot was longer than the two previous iterations, I managed to enrich the talk with more personal anecdotes and I also included a short section on how luck is not 100% random.

In this live-coded talk I walk the audience through a series of analogies between the built-in property and the way descriptors work.

I chose to introduce descriptors by establishing parallels with the built-in property because that is how I first understood descriptors. The enthusiastic nods while I was presenting and the feedback afterwards lead me to believe this was a good choice.

This 3h tutorial focuses in teaching the fundamentals of pandas and matplotlib in a light and interactive environment. To distinguish this tutorial from the others you can find online, we used data from the Pokémon franchise, which led to a highly engaging session.

The overall consensus of the participants was that the tutorial was well worth their time and one participant even wrote:

“[...] I strongly feel that this tutorial is the gold standard for what teaching should be. [...]”, Gabe C.

In this talk I share my experience working on a FOSS project full-time for 503 days, sharing some of the non-technical lessons I learned along the way.

These lessons fall into 4 broad categories:

1. how to get a tech job;
2. how to manage your ego;
3. how to interact with users; and
4. how to work with a big codebase.

Attendees were fond of the stories I shared and my openness. In fact, Oleh said that

“[I particularly enjoyed the] Direct and open speech.”

In this talk, I use an example from the Django framework to motivate the need for descriptors in the Python language. Then, I proceed to explain the descriptor protocol, tying it to the original motivating example, through a live-coded demonstration.

The objective of the talk is to make sure the audience understands that frameworks (like Django) rely heavily on Python features (like descriptors) to operate their machinery.

In this lighthearted lightning talk I took a Python script for a tkinter calculator and continuously refactored it until the whole calculator was a single expression. We managed to get some laughs out of this ridiculous process, while we also explored a couple of interesting Python features like conditional expressions, Boolean short-circuiting, and assignment expressions.

I was very happy with my performance and so was James, who dubbed it a “killer lightning talk”.

In this hands-on tutorial we went through the four main components that let you implement a programming language like Python from scratch.

I aimed for an interesting and fun workshop and the feedback I received tells me I delivered it:

“I liked that we quickly got a very simple compiler and interpreter up and running, we did all of the fun stuff without too much of the boring repetitive parts.” — Samir

In this talk I helped the audience discover the immense potential of Python's list comprehensions, dictionary comprehensions, set comprehensions, and generator expressions, as I presented them as an idiom that focuses on data transformations.

• Where: PyCon Portugal 2023
• When: 8th of September, 2023
• The talk was based on my book “Comprehending Comprehensions”
• Slides for the talk: static PDF (low res), online slides

This talk complemented my tutorial on the same subject, but the talk hadn't been accepted for the original schedule. However, I stepped in when a speaker had to cancel a few days before the conference.

This talk is a personal account of the things that I do differently in Python after having learned APL, a language that seemingly had nothing to do with Python and nothing to offer with respect to my Python code.

• Where: Func Prog Sweden meetup, remote
• When: 15th of August, 2023
• Written version of the talk: article
• Slides for the talk: static PDF (low res), online slides

In this poster session, I make the claim that the vast majority of people don't know comprehensions well enough! Thankfully, this is very easy to fix!

• Where: EuroPython 2023
• When: 20th of July, 2023
• Written version of the poster: book
• Download the poster for yourself: poster

Dozens approached me during my poster presentation – which I repeated tirelessly from noon until 3 pm because people just kept showing up – and I am very proud to say that my poster (presentation) got a lot of praise.

But, most importantly, I got feedback from people that learned new things about list comprehensions thanks to my poster.

In this impromptu Python tutorial, I gave a practical introduction to descriptors.

• Where: EuroPython 2023
• When: 18th of July, 2023
• Written version of the tutorial: blog article
• Slide deck: link

This tutorial had not been scheduled in advance. The day before, I noticed there was an empty slot in the schedule. After talking to the organisers, we concluded it was OK for me to use that slot and so I whipped up a short, practical tutorial for descriptors!

I got incredible feedback! A participant, Sofia, wrote:

“Fantastic workshop about descriptors! I came out of it having learnt a lot about what goes on in the background. Really loved the friendly approach and the practical exercises with solutions so that everyone can follow. Keep going 🚀”

In this Python talk, I introduce descriptors and show they are not black magic.

• Where: PyCon Sri Lanka 2023, virtual
• When: 25th of May, 2023
• Written version of the talk: blog article
• Video recording: YouTube
• Slide deck: link

In this Python talk, I teach the key ideas necessary for you to finally understand list, dict, and set comprehensions, and generator expressions.

• Where: PyOhio 2022, virtual
• When: 30th of July, 2022
• Written version of the talk: book
• Video recording: view on YouTube or below
• Slide deck: link