What is it?

The Python Study Group is an opportunity to learn, teach and discuss Python with your fellow edXers! Meetings occur once every three weeks and are listed on the engineering calendar.

How does it work?

Usually, a single presenter will put together a talk on a topic of their choosing. It can be anything related to python, including particular libraries or edX-specific patterns and usages. Sometimes we vary the format with things like

Group code reviews
Helping someone with a personal project
Roundtable
AMAs with some of our experts

We are also actively looking to expand the different types of study group meetings, so if you have an idea please ping the group runner (currently @Rebecca Graber (Deactivated) ) on slack.

Who can present?

Newbies, experts, and everyone in between. We especially encourage folks who are newer to python to present, as there is no better way to learn a topic than to teach others. We have also had presentations of the form ‘please help me with this thing I don’t understand,' where one person picked the brain of the assembly on a topic they were struggling with.

Tell me more about presenting

We have put together a handy guide to presenting at PSG: https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AC/pages/2856158322 . If you are interested in presenting, please reach out to @Rebecca Graber (Deactivated) in Slack.

Schedule:

Some links are still in the process of being migrated as part of the Google docs migration

Most recent event should be at the top of the table.

Date	Topic	Presenter	Links

Date	Topic	Presenter	Links
2023-04-18	DRF musings	@Alexander Dusenbery	https://github.com/iloveagent57/drf-best-practices/blob/aed/yells-at-cloud/docs/drf-jazz-20230418.md
2022-04-05	Testing roundtable		https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bQ7VcW-gz1S9T-Ls4aWgZK54jyOUntQH/view?usp=sharing
2022-03-15	Async IO	@Christopher Pappas and @Ned Batchelder (Deactivated)	https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w_U9mFPRwq7DndQUv5RY3LSozFbE0z10rArfrPzXVJs/edit# Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WqQKWEyoIaFkF6sJ2MeAjHpxBIQ9HWm2/view?usp=sharing
2022-02-22	Why Your Mocks Don’t Work	@Ned Batchelder (Deactivated) @Tim McCormack	Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZtGSewbOM8FUyr07tWhBhiU2PGIdDyWo/view?usp=sharing
2022-02-01	Particularly Clueless Presenter: ASGI and WSGI	@Rebecca Graber (Deactivated)	Video: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/13K7rTX7MUDKmRLNzrMu4KeASq8Q-7rGQ Slides/notes: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XsSqR4FnaNrLlgXbX3gAYVlaR6qy7dWHZLpxOa4ufrA/edit?usp=sharing
2022-01-11	The Django 3.2 Upgrade: Automation, Coordination, and Highlights	@Jeremy Bowman (Deactivated)	Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yc91jmPn3t-R5nRlkrU3Fv7JWrbmhaB6/view?usp=sharing Django 3.2 upgrade project page: https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AC/pages/2844426436 Original DjangoCon presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny-3AaNHbbs
2021-11-09	XBlocks	@Nathan Sprenkle	video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aEpBHqQdFbSS4RdwHw-DWrgbzKOgbF7L/view?usp=sharing On the role of XBlocks going forward: https://discuss.openedx.org/t/arch-decision-record-for-the-role-of-xblocks/2775 https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/pull/24538 Extra XBlock thoughts (+ regrets): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Flj2MS5Neyw6ilSMPdjHqP_4ATX3Qs_pcQdLJIpeSLA/edit https://medium.com/@dormsbee/xblock-lessons-field-data-complexity-2ef32d961b97 https://medium.com/@dormsbee/xblock-lessons-costly-conveniences-38ff8e7de6f1 https://engineering.edx.org/xblock-lessons-plugin-performance-and-grading-2f85a1d6fb2a
2021-10-19	Well That’s Interesting: edX’s Favorite Python Gotchas	Many!	video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RqFemzBYf6-qZP6V_UXbLWbF20PF77D1/view?usp=sharing Notebook: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1y9rWR4OEvAzfbf_NuJSUTCUkuBdxMYqA?usp=sharing
2021-09-28	When To Use FP in Python	@Kevin Afable (Deactivated)	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GoHIAvrD-jE7tMbQS79VBAK8dXVCS1Hp/view?usp=sharing
2021-09-07	N+1	@Ken Clary (Deactivated)	https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DQTiV77ria8elHcFPbicRG0x-Xtt2C9XrG-XdQzBSgY/edit
2021-07-06	Group code review	@Feanil Patel (Deactivated)	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n-Jbzd0bdl7uh3HoPtcWF2hRc4m1rSvE/view?usp=sharing
2021-06-15	Generators	@Diane Kaplan (Deactivated)	recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17DCNnHZpfl25TbCYS1FShuoe0BHF4QQ3/view?usp=sharing
2021-05-25	Persistent Celery Task Results	@Alexander Dusenbery	https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/~adusenbery/blog/2021/03/16/2499870990/Fun+with+Celery+Task+Results#Links-to-things (link to demo PR inside)
2021-04-13	Django Admin	@Dave Ormsbee (Deactivated)	recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15M4Mn8CMtpAS-ZeLXo-Bp8gnErF4GIc2/view?usp=sharing
2021-03-23	Ask me (ned) anything!	@Ned Batchelder (Deactivated)	https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AC/pages/2446590287/Python+AMA+6 – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aM31KERPxr8J13ZdkWsb1-yEl4Wz-80u/view?usp=sharing
2021-03-02	Debugging tricky problems	@Feanil Patel (Deactivated) @Tim McCormack	recording https://docs.google.com/document/d/115hCwSFyekQfG5P1ws5BsMdyRf1IRWhpos4GSGcUf50/edit
2021-02-09	HACKATHON!!!
2021-01-19	Dunder Methods	@Christopher Pappas	recording

Whe

Potential Topics

Date	Topic	Presenter	Links

Date	Topic	Presenter
DATE TBD	Async/Await	@Christopher Pappas
DATE TBD	Is Python pass-by-value or pass-by-reference	@Nathan Sprenkle
DATE TBD	How XBlocks work in the context of edX platform	@Nathan Sprenkle
DATE TBD (but not soon, busy ramping up with devops/SRE)	Context Managers	@Christopher Pappas
DATE TBD	pip-tools: Demystifying "make upgrade"	@Kyle McCormick (Deactivated)
DATE TBD	Creating public APIs on edx-platform	@Jesper Hodge (Deactivated)

Older Study Group Sessions

Date	Topic	Presenter	Links

Date	Topic	Presenter	Links
3/15/18	Generators
4/3/18	Generator Expressions
4/17/18	Multiple Inheritance
5/1/18	Decorators
5/22/18	Special Methods
6/12/18	Itertools
6/26/18	Py 2 vs. Py 3
7/10/18	Inheritance
7/31/18	Assignment
8/14/18	Exceptions
8/28/18	Scoping	@Bessie Steinberg (Deactivated)	https://github.com/BessieSteinberg/py_study_group/tree/master/scoping
9/11/18	Mocking	@Bessie Steinberg (Deactivated)
9/25/18	Cancelled due to Hackathon
10/9/18	Callables: a Smorgasbord	@Ben Holt (Deactivated)	https://github.com/inventhouse/tutorials/tree/master/PySG-Callables
10/23/18	More Fun with Callables!	@Bessie Steinberg (Deactivated)	https://github.com/BessieSteinberg/py_study_group/tree/master/callables
11/6/18	Decorators	@Bessie Steinberg (Deactivated)
11/20/18	Context Managers	@Bessie Steinberg (Deactivated)
12/4/18	Python 3	Troy Sankey
12/18/18	Iterators and Iterables	@Bessie Steinberg (Deactivated)
1/1/19	Cancelled due to Work Holiday
1/15/19	Fun with import	@Bessie Steinberg (Deactivated)
1/29/19	Cancelled due to Hackathon
2/12/19	Comprehensions	@Ben Holt (Deactivated)	Postponed due to winter storm - get home safely!
2/26/19	Comprehensions	@Ben Holt (Deactivated)	Ben sick today, sorry! 😞
2019-03-12	Write a unit test from scratch	@Alexander Dusenbery	Unit Testing in edx-platform
2019-03-26	Cancelled due to Open edX Conference
2019-04-09	Comprehensions	@Ben Holt (Deactivated)	Notes and examples
2019-04-23	Factories (Fuzzy text and stuff)	@Rickie Reilly (Deactivated)
2019-05-07
2019-05-21	Debugging, pdb, finding stuff	@Alexander Dusenbery
2019-06-06	Assignment Rerun	@Bessie Steinberg (Deactivated)
2019-06-18	Factories (Fuzzy text and stuff)	@Rickie Reilly (Deactivated)
2019-07-02	Regular Expressions	@Christopher Pappas
2019-07-16	DRYer testing (with mixins, ddt, etc.)	@Kyle McCormick (Deactivated)	https://github.com/kdmccormick/edx-python-study-group
2019-07-30	Decorators	@Jinder Singh (Deactivated)
2019-08-13	Inheritance	@Bessie Steinberg (Deactivated)
2019-08-27	Pickling	@Rebecca Graber (Deactivated)
2019-09-10	Which is faster?