Python PH

PythonPH November 2013 Meetup at SourcePad

Posted by: codemickeycode-blog on 31 December 2013

SourcePad hosted the venue for PythonPH’s November 2013 Meetup. It was a nice, cozy place for a meetup and they were kind enough to accommodate Pythonistas even on a weekend. This month, we had two presentations.

Show and Tell

Jeffrey Torres Gayo is a 21 year old student who studied Python for roughly 4 months. He showed us his tkinter application and ren’py game. His codes are rough and can still get better but hewas able to showcase his skills in programming.

His presentation is short but it gives everyone a taste of how easy it is to program in Python. The projects he showed us is not a requirement for his school but it provides a look on what a self motivated beginner can do.

Coding Challenge

For the second part of the meetup, we had a Coding Challenge aimed at beginners.

This is the second time PythonPH organized a Coding Challenge. The first one was held early this year. Just like before, everyone, regardless of Python experience were encouraged to join the challenge and fast track their learning by getting their hands dirty.

The core of the challenge is essentially a “gamified” teaching tool that lets participants experience first hand how fun and easy to use Python is.

Here’s how it works:

Participants are grouped into two categories: ”Complete beginners” and ”beginners”. They will act as gladiators. The Intermediate and Expert Pythonistas will act as mentors to the gladiators.

The Quizmaster will have everyone imagine that they are trapped inside a building and their only means of escape is by solving all his questions. A gladiator who answers correctly, automatically saves themselves and their mentor.

But! If one fails to answer the question, their mentor is sacrificed and fed to the lions.

Be warned, a gladiator is only allowed 2 attempts to get the answer right. In fact, 2 mentors got fed to the lion during the event!

Interesting facts: Since speaking between the mentors and gladiators is not allowed during the game, the Quizmaster tried to confuse the players. This caused one of the mentors to tell that the Quizmaster is evil.

This just added to the suspense of the gladiators double checking their work to save their mentors from the lion!

All in all, it was a fun meetup. We were lucky to have awesome mentors who were kind enough to share their Python skills to the newbies. We even had non­programmer guests from non-IT professions who passed the coding challenge.

After the games, the guests thanked the organizers for the fun inspirations, and SourcePad for the hospitable and spacious venue. Like the lion in our Coding Challenge, they are hungry for more!

Disclaimer: This event was done by professionals. No pythons, anacondas, cobras or other snakes were harmed during the process. ;­)