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Nicholas H.Tollervey

ntoll@ntoll.org

Thank organisers.

I'm Nicholas. I'm a principal engineer at Anaconda, working in the PyScript team.
A personal talk. Nothing to do with my day job.
Music as a metaphor, a contrast and a foil to coding.
Why: an opportunity to explore, re-evaluate and re-encounter coding from an unusual and stimulating perspective.
I'll be paying special attention to teaching, learning and the place of software within our culture.

Any musicians? Apologise for piano.
Explain 2nd study: as Python is to my tuba playing, so copy and pasting JavaScript from StackOverflow is to my piano playing.
Thus demonstrating the power of analogy and metaphor to reveal interesting insights about the world.

Part 1.
Concepts

Theoretical underpinnings: we organise code in an editor. We're going to make a game with some assets.
Style: we're using PyGameZero - a framework whose where we override pre-defined functions. What's a function?
Performance: it's not just code that matters... I have to make something fun and interesting. Show splat-a-cat.

import random

cats = ["cat1", "cat2", "cat3", "cat4", ]
meows = [sounds.meow1, sounds.meow2, sounds.meow3,
  sounds.meow4, sounds.meow5, ]
current_cats = []
music.play("disco")


def draw():
    screen.fill((255, 255, 255))
    for cat in current_cats:
        cat.draw()


def update():
    if random.randint(1, 100) == 1:
        cat_sprite = random.choice(cats)
        meow_sound = random.choice(meows)
        x = random.randint(100, 700)
        y = random.randint(100, 500)
        new_cat = Actor(cat_sprite, pos=(x, y))
        current_cats.append(new_cat)
        meow_sound.play()
    for cat in current_cats:
        cat.angle += 10

Part 2.
The Journey

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Part 3.
Embodiment

Introduce John. Founded PyConUK 2007. EuroPython chair 2009-2010, lost his fight with cancer in 2015. An excellent engineer, formidable organiser and wonderful mentor.
John Pinner and I used Music for Youth as our template for the PyConUK education track.
This is important because...
Asking what sort of education and learning our community supports is how we decide what sort of community we become.
For it is through education and learning that we engage with our future colleagues, friends and supporters.
Coding education isn't just explaining stuff.
We attempted to embody the sorts of behaviour, attitudes, skills, attention and knowledge we hoped to...

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I want to briefly, respectfully and carefully describe my personal experience of what happens when we don't embody this sort of community...
In 2017, it was made very clear, in no uncertain terms, that my contributions to the education track were unwelcome unless they were "on message" and conformed to a certain corporate led view of Python in education in the UK.
The education track no longer embodied an inclusive coding culture where everyone was welcome to contribute and participate in a way that reflected their part in our wonderfully diverse community.
When I carefully and respectfully raised concerns, I was put in my place.

I think you should delete that tweet. You're suggesting @PyConUK is not a welcoming place.

I am a senior member of the UK Python community. How dare you bad mouth our community on an international platform.

Crushed

Humiliated

Despondent

How did my experience of the UK community make me feel?

Crushed: because a community that prides itself on being welcoming, inclusive and supportive, clearly wasn't and, as demonstrated by my inbox, still isn't.

Humiliated: much of this played out on social media. I'm a very shy and private person, despite who you think you see on stage at this moment. It is deeply wounding to be personally attacked.

Despondent: 2018 was a tipping point, and since then, for the sake of my mental health, I have had no contact with the "formal" UK Python community or PyCon UK.

For what it's worth, I hope people in the UK Python community never treat one of their own like this ever again.

Part 4.
Expression

Why is this so important..?

Code isn't written for computers, in the same way music isn't written for instruments.

We write code because we are human beings, imbued with ideas, imagination and feelings. Code expresses our thoughts made digital: a medium for our values, cultures and ways of life.

In other words, we are expressing ourselves when we write code. Our code reflects who we are. It reflects where we come from. It reflects how we want to be in the world.

If there's one thing I hope we coders learn from the best of the musical world, it's compassion, tolerance and respect for freedom of expression in all the ways music represents.

At the start we examined lots of different skills, aspects of knowledge and ways to pay attention to the world. The sorts of things we learn about when we become musicians or coders.

I think these are what YoYo Ma means by techniques to be transcended.

When we express ourselves, we take all this stuff, assemble it, refine it, fix it, break it and play around with it...

In so doing, we also put something of ourselves into the thing we're making.

Only when we feel safe and secure do we send it into the world so others experience it.

I get to encounter a little bit of you in this thing you have created, and my world is made larger as a result.

Image/Video Credits (educational fair use):

Fiddle kid: Greenwich Music School
Nicola Benedetti: The Times
Pub fiddle: screen grab from this video
Kala Ramnath: The Hindu
Heavy metal cello: Apocalyptica
Octubafest: NMPAT
Recorder: Sarah Jeffery / Team Recorder
Augmented 5th: Jesse Strickland
Moon: Heinz-Eberhard Boden
Music for Youth: Official website

John Pinner: EuroPython
Bach: Wikimedia
Beethoven: Wikimedia
Wagner: Wikimedia
Bruckner: Wikimedia
Steve Jobs: Wikimedia
Mark Zuckerberg: Wikimedia
Elon Musk: Wikimedia
Bill Gates: Wikimedia
YoYo Ma: Freep

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Part 1.Concepts

Part 2.The Journey

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Part 3.Embodiment

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