How did it go?

For this activity, I decided to step way outside my comfort zone and join a Python meetup with a group in Norfolk Virginia. The pick of that location, doesn’t mean anything, it was just the one that worked the best for my schedule. I found the meetup by googling python group meetups and searching through many groups, all around the country, to find one that worked with my schedule. I picked this meeting to go to because it was specifically advertised for “new users and demos”. I hoped that by doing this I would be less lost and confused by what was being discussed and demonstrated throughout the meeting. This kind of backfired because I was the only new person there, and the group tonight wasn’t very large, so I stood out and was kind of the focus of attention. The organizer did make a huge effort to help me feel included and welcomed, which was very kind of him. We basically spent the whole meeting chatting about my experiences and what I was learning, and he pointed me to some other python programs and ideas, which I will definitely look into later. I think, on further reflection after the event that this event was a good experience. It gave me the opportunity to connect with and learn from other people who also use Python in their day to day work but not in an academic setting, nor in an “I’m a professional coder for a big business” kind of way. But I can also see how a more structured demonstration would have been more beneficial, as well, as there would have been a more clearly defined focus for the meeting rather than just a casual chat session.

What did you learn?

Throughout the two hours I spent in the meetup, I learned several new things. I learned about a programs called Jupyter, which was described as “a way to use a browser as a GUI for iPython”, and Spyder, which is an IDE that can run code while offline. I also learned that dataframes are data in python’s memory that you can load, modify, and save and that a dataframe represents a rectangular table of data and contains an ordered collection of columns, each of which can be a different value type (numeric, string, boolean, etc.). The DataFrame has both a row and column index; it can be thought of as a dict of Series all sharing the same index. Under the hood, the data is stored as one or more two-dimensional blocks rather than a list, dict, or some other collection of one-dimensional arrays.

Would you find value in this kind of event after class?

I think an event like this does bring some value to classes such as ours. The primary goal of the meetup I attended was for coders to come together and for new coders to have a place to ask questions, learn some stuff, and see examples being worked on in real life. I think something like that does have the potential to help new programmers get more familiar with the language, as well as giving them a non-classroom environment to socialize and code at the same time.

How was the experience different from your expectations?

I was definitely expecting something a bit more structured from the initial description. For the first hour and a half it was basically just myself and the organizer chatting about coding and what I was learning in class. It was a good experience to see that, even though the organizer runs a coding group, he definitely doesn’t know everything about Python either. He mentioned that he primarily uses coding to process data and that he learned it in the course of being a biologist. So it was definitely interesting seeing another example of how someone can learn and use a language like python.

Could you see yourself becoming a member of a professional community like this in the future?

Potentially yes, I do think having a social place where new coders can come together to learn from their peers is highly beneficial. In the future, I definitely will consider looking up groups like this one. Not because I anticipate being in a highly code-intensive career (though, you never know what the future holds and how my career field will change and adapt), but because I enjoy coding and would enjoy learning new things and keeping my skills sharp through a low-intensity communal experience like this one.