Easier Web Development For Data Scientists

I am offering three free classes in easier web development for Data Scientists. We will talk about Wikis, HTML, CSS, Javascript and Python in the Browser. But we will focus on their less-well-known but easier-to-use alternatives. Pug instead of HTML, Coffeescript instead of Javascript, and Python (Transcrypt and Pyodided) instead of Javascript.

24 Febuary 18:30 - 21:30 Wiki and HTML.

Every project needs a wiki, so that is the first thing we will build. And every Data scientist needs to publish their completed Jupyter Notebooks as a web page using NBConvert, so we will also do that. It is all trivial to do, so most of the class will be spent learning basic HTML, and it's much easier-to-use cousin Pug. We will learn to create a simple web page with HTML, and then see how much easier it is to do with Pug. Pug is like Python for Page Templating. Pug tosses out closing tags and opening brackets, and then uses indentation to define structure. Pug makes it quite easy to build custom menu bars for your published Jupiter Notebooks.

2 March 18:30 - 21:30 Javascript and Coffeescript.

Javascript is essential for web development, but all those brackets drive us Python developers nuts. Coffessecript tosses out the brackets and uses indentation to define structure. Much easier to read and write.

9 March 18:30 - 21:30 Python in the Browser (PyOdide and Transcrypt)

Now we are getting into the interesting stuff. PyOdide is cPython compiled to WebAssembly and running in the browser. It contains 37 of the most important data science libraries, so it is great for porting a Jupyter notebook over to a web application. The killer app is hospital data processing, where it is illegal to upload the patient's data to the server. Instead, just run the Python code inthe browser.

Transcrypt is Python transpiled to Javascript. The run-time is tiny, 20Kbytes, so it is great for building rich web applications. Wonderful software, with a great reputation, but barely known.

I am not a graphics guy, so sadly I will not be covering SASS and LESS instead of CSS. You can learn those on your own.

Feel free to show up for any one class, several classes, or all of the classes.

All classes are taught in English by a native English speaker, and polyglot. Feel free to ask questions in Polish.

Bring a laptop. No need to install anything before the class. The whole point of this class is to make web development easier, so we do everything in the browser.