Presenters

Alex Martelli and Anna Ravenscroft

Intended Audience

Programmers with skill and experience in Java (and maybe C and/or C++) but not in Python.

Summary

As Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO, wrote in his blog "Different isn't always better, but better's always different", Java programmers must start thinking of Java as not just a language, but as a platform, for Ruby, Python and Java.

If you're a Java programmer, this tutorial will make you into a budding Python programmer -- starting you on your way towards mastery of Python.

Focus is on language and built-ins, rather than on specific libraries: different Python implementations (JVM, .NET, free-standing) let you use just about any library you want (whether it's in Java, C#, C, Fortran, C++... or, of course, Python !-)

Presenter Bio

Alex Martelli lives in Palo Alto, CA, and works as Uber Tech Lead for Google Inc in Mountain View, Ca. He won ActiveState's Activators' Choice Award in 2002 and the PSF's Frank Willison Memorial Award in 2006. He's a member of the Python Software Foundation, developers and maintainer of the gmpy third-party Python extension module, author of Python in a Nutshell, co-editor of the Python Cookbook, and the happy husband of Anna Ravenscroft (also a member of the Python Software Foundation and co-editor of the Python Cookbook). Anna is majoring in Symbolic Systems at Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA) with a concentration on Computer-Human Interface.