PyCon, Day Two
My tutorial today, Testing Websites With Python and Selenium, was not as promising as I hoped. In fact, I was rather disappointed with the comedy of errors that ensued.
- The talk started 30 minutes late.
- We spent the first hour configuring our computers, something we could have done before the talk if there had been any notes circulated.
- Even once we got there, there were no notes. The speaker would add the commands he was running to a notes.txt file, then we would go download it from his computer via HTTP.
- When asked how to configure Firefox profiles on Windows, the answer was “I don’t know.” The Windows folks banded together to solve the issue, but…I mean…come on. You’re presenting to a multi-OS room. It’s your responsibility to understand the material.
Rather than get all frothy and unkind, I will only say that an ounce of preparation goes a long way. I did learn a few things, but the talk was so much less informative than yesterday’s tutorial that I left feeling that I would have done better just reading the docs on my own.
Now, that being said, this is not a problem with PyCon, just this one tutorial. I still have very high hopes for PyCon in general. Tomorrow is the first day of the formal conference, and I look forward to seeing what it holds.
Stay tuned for Day Three.
Originally published at Unquiet Desperation. You can comment here or there.