[vox] BayPIGgies meeting Thursday June 25, 2009: Abstraction

[jim]

BayPIGgies meeting Thursday June 25, 2009: Abstraction    

NOTE BayPIGgies meets at the Symantec Vcafe, 
at Symantec's location at 350 Ellis Street in Mountain View. 
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&fb=1&split=1&gl=us&ei=w6i_Sfr6MZmQsQOzlv0v&hl=en&t=h&msa=0&msid=116202735295394761637.00046550c09ff3d96bff1&ll=37.397693,-122.053707&spn=0.002902,0.004828&z=18

Tonight's talk is 
* Abstraction 
by Alex Martelli  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Martelli 


Meetings start with a Newbie Nugget, a short discussion of an 
essential Python feature, specially for those new to Python. 
Tonight's Newbie Nugget: None 


LOCATION 
Symantec Corporation
Symantec Vcafe
350 Ellis Street
Mountain View, CA 94043

BayPIGgies meeting information is available at 
http://baypiggies.net/new/plone



------------------------ Agenda ------------------------
 
..... 7:30 PM ...........................
General hubbub, inventory end-of-meeting announcements, 
any first-minute announcements. 


..... 7:35 PM to 7:35 PM ................

Newbie Nugget: none  


..... 7:35 PM to 8:55 PM ................

Abstraction 
by Alex Martelli 

Abstraction is a powerful servant, but a dangerous master. We code,
design, think, debug ... on a tower of abstractions. Spolsky's Law
tells us that "All abstractions leak". This talk explores why they
leak, why that's often a problem, what to do about it; I also cover
why sometimes abstractions SHOULD "leak", and how best to produce 
and consume abstraction layers.


..... 8:55 PM to 9:20 PM  ................
Mapping and Random Access

Mapping is a rapid-fire audience announcement of topics 
the announcers are interested in. 

Random Access follows immediately to allow follow up 
individually on the announcements and other topics of 
interest.