Meetup 1: People Programming of Triangle Hacker Hours
Time: Sunday Apr.17, 4-6pm
Place: Francesca’s Dessert Cafe, Durham
http://www.meetup.com/trianglehackerhours/events/230127718/
Meetup 2: Durham Project Night of Triangle Python Users Group
Time: Monday Apr.18, 6-8pm
Place: Caktus Group, Durham
http://www.meetup.com/tripython/events/229887451/
I participated these two meetups in Durham on this Monday and last Sunday. Both of these two meetups do not have a specific topic, and people can code whatever they want, work on their current work or projects, seek help from each other or share ideas of technologies. For the first one, there is no restriction of languages to be used, Javascript, Python, Ruby, Java, shell scripting, R, C, .NET, Objective-C, CSS, AngularJS etc. are all fine. And for the second one, the programming activitity is for Python users.
I participated both the two meetups with my friends, and at both of the meetups I met some of my classmates. We discussed about our final projects there. During the first meetup, we met two JavaScript programmers. One of them is a computer science major student who is already graduated and we shared some thoughts of new programming tools. I did data cleaning and file loading of the final project at the rest of the time. During the second meetup, I and my friend discussed the final project together. I continuely worked on data cleaning and tried to fix errors from loading the data, mainly the tweets part. Although the tweets part was not solved, my friend’s suggestion of uploading data file instead of just copy and paste from Excel worked for other variables.
I found this two meetups very useful since they both provide a nice environment (especially the one at Caktus) for coding and discussing problems with fellow Python users. These two activities made me realize the power of learning together. When I tried to express the problem that I was facing, listened to others’ problems and tried to solve each other’s problems, both my understanding of my project and the logic map in my head were improved. At the same time, I learned how to convey my ideas to others more clearly and easily acquirable.