Editorial Director of InsPyration.org
The editorial director and main author of the InsPyration.org site is Sébastien CHAZALLET, the author of the book "Python, les fondamentaux du langage" published by ENI editions.
A convinced Pythonista and avid user of free software, he has been independent since 2011, founder of InsPyration EURL, trainer, and technical expert.
The site allows him to share his passion for Python, to promote this technology and more broadly to help democratize free software.
Editorial Content
The main (but not exclusive) theme of the site is the Python programming language.
The content is organized into five major parts:
- Presentation of the book "Python, les fondamentaux du langage", published by ENI editions
- Tutorials (presented as supplements to the book)
- GLMF Articles (resources related to articles published in "Linux magazine")
- News
- Training
Highlighting the Book
The book I wrote for ENI editions represents a significant amount of work and aims to be relatively comprehensive, covering a very broad functional spectrum and addressing many technical aspects.
One of the objectives I set for myself is to evolve this book along with the language itself. This site therefore allows me to write occasionally about new concepts, new modules, new practices, and to capitalize on them while awaiting a future second edition that will certainly be planned soon.
Tutorials
Adding tutorials compensates for certain gaps in the book, emphasizes important points, particularly those whose use is not natural, or discusses issues that did not exist when the book was written or that have evolved since. For example, everything related to Python 3.3 is not in the book but finds significant coverage on the site.
These tutorials are typically the kind of content that will be found in another form in a future second edition of the book.
Articles Published in GLMF
GLMF refers to GNU/Linux Magazine from Diamond editions (and more broadly GNU/Linux Pratique or GNU/Linux Essentiel).
The GLMF articles section was the trigger for setting up the site. Indeed, I absolutely wanted to have a place to deposit source code to save readers from having to type it again, which is as tedious as it is useless (one of my maxims is that a good developer is a lazy developer, meaning one who organizes their laziness to be as efficient as possible with the least effort, one of the reasons I love Python).
You will therefore find the resources I write on all subjects, knowing that this can include HTML 5, JQuery (you have to go through that when doing web development) or even InkScape or Gimp (which are extensible with Python and therefore within the site's theme).
News
This section relays information about developments in Python or some of its modules for which I have a particular interest (SQLAlchemy or Turbogears, for example), or even events concerning the community.
Training
This section presents the training courses I give through several channels. They are based on my book (each participant receives a copy).
Target Audience
This site is aimed at developers of all levels wishing to learn Python or Python 3.
Objectives
Initial Objective
The primary idea is to enable developers to find solutions to common problems by sharing my experience. I am absolutely convinced that the Python language (Python 3 in particular) is a professional solution covering a broad scope and offering significant gains in terms of development time and efficiency.
Moreover, everything presented here must be original, even innovative. I do not want documents that are mere paraphrases of already existing documentation.
Current Situation
Launched at the time of the book's release, this site is still under construction in the sense that not all sections are yet in place. The current target is to finish it in time to celebrate the book's first anniversary, in February 2013.
For the rest, the site runs relatively well when I manage to find time to relay information I find by reading the official sites of projects I follow, when I find time to capitalize on experience reports, and when I find time to do a bit of research and development.
The current content is gradually expanding, but the process will be long while awaiting future developments in my activity in 2013.
General Objectives
Whatever the evolution of the site, the objective truly remains to offer original documentation, both different and complementary to what is found elsewhere, and above all, in French.
The site aims to be a help for beginners to become independent with the technology (and learn to appreciate it). Experienced developers will find solutions to challenges they encounter regularly.
Short-term Objectives
I have a lot of material to write up, format, and share.
Being a web developer and taking part in a web project that absolutely must run on Python 3, I chose Pyramid technology and made choices to compensate for the non-existence of ports for certain modules. A number of tutorials on this technology will result from this.
Furthermore, there are a number of themes close to my heart on which there is so much to say. Indeed, when you see the astonishing capabilities of SQLAlchemy, for example, it is awe-inspiring. There are also many best practices that came with Python 3 that I want to highlight, as they have convinced me.
More generally, as a fervent defender of Python 3, I eagerly await notable progress from the main web development frameworks to create numerous tutorials on the subject. I am thinking particularly of Django and Turbogears, but also many smaller modules.
Medium-term Objectives
In the medium term, my activity will be refocused on training. I will then offer longer and relatively complete tutorials retracing the complete process of creating a mini-application (console, graphical, web, or other), starting from the design phase, arguing for architecture choices, translating them into Python module choices, then carrying out all development using a continuous integration process.
We will also produce short, targeted video tutorials.
Complete tutorials on each graphical library (including GTK, Qt, and wxWidgets) as well as a wide selection of web frameworks are planned. Comparative studies of the latter using the QSOS methodology were also planned.
Long-term Objectives
When the site's development is complete and contributions are regular (with a recurring audience), the desire would be to give time to communities, particularly through the translation of official documentation, where the need exists.
The ultimate goal would be to make this site a reference enabling everyone to do continuous and self-taught training on Python (and related technologies). The program is ambitious, but Python's qualities are worth it!