[BioPython] Europython 2002

[Thomas Hamelryck]

Hi Bio-pythoneers,

I thought a small report on the Europython meeting (Charleroi, Belgium, so 
close to home for me) with a focus on the bio-talks (and talks that were for 
some reason of special interest) would be interesting for you.... 

Yair Benita gave a nice and very understandable overview of Biopython. There 
were quite some questions afterwards as well. Good job, Yair!

Alexander Fayolle (Logilab, Inc.) gave a talk on python & XML. He e.g. 
described the differences between the different XML modules out there (speed, 
API, etc.). XML is of course ideal to store configuration info. BTW, does 
Biopython use XML somewhere?

Paul Dubois (Numerical python) gave a very general talk on steering compiled
code with python. He emphasized design-by-contract using assert in python, 
and advised everybody to read the classic article on eiffel.com.

Konrad Hinsen (the author of MMTK) gave a very nice talk. Main topic for me 
was paralelization of python code using the BSP approach (which basically 
completely decouples communication between nodes & computation). He gave some 
code examples that looked _very_ cool and simple to use. 

Martin von Loewis talked about memory management in python 2.3. I was pretty 
surprised (and I was not the only one - some big shots jumped up as well) to 
hear that you have to add some special code to your C modules to make sure 
that cyclic references get recycled in python 2.2 and up. 

Andy Robinson gave a very impressive talk on ReportLab. It seems to be a 
great tool to create all kinds of scientific reports, and can create PDF 
files. I believe Biopython uses Reportlab's stuff somewhere...

Bernhard Herzog gave a talk on Sketch, a vector drawing pacakage. It is 
completely extensible in python, and you can use Sktech as a library as well 
I gather. It looks very impressive and fast. 

Dinu Gherman gave a talk on python & SVG (scalable vector graphics). Again, 
this seems to be very suitable to create all kinds of diagrams and drawings.

All in all it was a nice meeting.

Cheers,

-Thomas
  
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Thomas Hamelryck      Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
Intitute for Molecular Biology           ULTR Department
Paardenstraat 65   1640 Sint-Gensius-Rode    Belgium
              http://ultr.vub.ac.be/~thomas