I did this in 2009 & 2011, let's try again.
1. What’s the coolest Python application, framework or library you have discovered in 2012 ?
PyZMQ - This library for ZeroMQ is much more than a simple binding. It has great features like its own event loop based on Tornado's one -- MinRK, the guy behing this library is involved in IPython which uses ZeroMQ. So since IPython is growing big, PyZMQ is getting a lot of love :-)
I used it in Circus and Powerhose and had lots of fun.
One thing that was painful was its bad interaction with gevent but this is not an issue anymore, now that PyZMQ includes a green subpackage.
2. What new programming technique did you learn in 2012 ?
Since most of my projects now use Gevent - I learned how to detect and fix bugs related to Gevent interactions. Things like: a library using the stdlib Queue module and that suddenly locks.
This does not sound like an extraordinary thing, but I've seen people banging their heads for hours on those. I banged my own head quite hard but I am getting better at detecting and fixing those now.
3. Which open source project did you contribute to the most in 2012 ? What did you do ?
Circus. I've coded a big chunk of it - and worked in most areas except the signals - https://github.com/mozilla-services/circus/graphs/contributors with Alexis and a couple of new contributors. Benoit is #2 with over 300k lines but that's because he accidentaly commited a 300k lines log file ;)
4. Which Python blog or website did you read the most in 2012 ?
Reddit again this year.
5. What are the three top things you want to learn in 2013 ?
In 2013 I want to learn more about photography, electronics & writing. Yeah nothing related to Python this time :-)
6. What is the top software, application or library you wish someone would write in 2013 ?
I whish we could continue our cool leaf recognizer project with Olivier & Ronan: http://whatthefeuille.com/ - because it would be a great app if it takes off.
Want to do your own list ? here's how:
- copy-paste the questions and answer to them in your blog
- tweet it with the #2012pythonmeme hashtag