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Add June 2025 meeting notes (#158)
Co-authored-by: Stan Ulbrych <[email protected]>
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.codespellrc

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[codespell]
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ignore-words-list = Ege, Ned
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ignore-words-list = co-ordinate, Ege, Ned

docs/monthly-meeting/2025-06.md

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# Documentation Community Team Meeting (June 3, 2025)
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## Roll call
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(Name / `@GitHubUsername` _[/ Discord, if different]_)
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- Adam Turner / `@AA-Turner`
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- Bartosz / `@bswck`
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- Blaise Pabon / `@blaisep` / `controlpl4n3`
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- Carol Willing / `@willingc`
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- Ee / `@EWDurbin` / `@ee.durbin`
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- Jeff Jacobson / `@jwjacobson`
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- Joe Kaufeld / `@itsthejoker`
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- Kattni
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- Keith / `@KeithTheEE`
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- Lufti Zuchri
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- Ned Batchelder / `@nedbat`
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- Panagiotis Skias
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- Petr Viktorin / `@encukou`
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- Trey Hunner / `@treyhunner`
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## Introductions
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> If there are any new people, we should do a round of introductions.
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Several new attendees were present, a round of introductions were made.
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## Discussion
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### Translation
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[Carol]:
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> There's been lots of activity over the past 2 months about translations. It's great
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> that we have strong interest in translation. 🎉
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>
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> Building on the helpful work of Julien Palard and others on
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> [PEP 545](https://peps.python.org/pep-0545/) eight years ago and stewarding
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> translations since then, we discussed briefly at the CPython Language Summit to
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> revisit any process modifications that may be beneficial moving forward. One of the
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> key process changes that the core team found beneficial (some languages are already
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> doing) was to expand the coordinator role from an individual to more than one
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> individual when there is interest.
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>
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> Here's a [baseline doc](https://hackmd.io/@willingcn/Synk3LXWgl) to bootstrap
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> discussion at the meeting.
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Multiple coordinators for each translation are preferred. PEP 545 specifies one. Anybody
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who's blocked on translation should get the right tools and get the ability to do the
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translations. Carol's recommendation: put amending PEP 545 on hold & let the process
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settle down. If anyone would like to co-ordinate, file an issue and possibly let people
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know on Discourse or Discord.
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Is anyone blocked for translations? -- no one speaks up
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Questions about the document & plans? -- no one speaks up
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[Adam]: On the process point: if new translators should open issues, are we seeking the
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Editorial Board (EB) members to approve, and how do we have appropriate permissions
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assigned?
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[Carol]: My thinking is that the process should be reflected in the devguide. In pep
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545, in about three months from now, we'll amend whatever we need to, but the process
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itself tends to be better captured in the devguide instructions. Things like 'who would
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the repo belong to' and such. Right now, I can open a PR that is a recap of the meeting,
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for coordinators, if you're interested, let people know in the devguide and let the EB
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know by making a PR and making a post on Discourse under the Documentation topic that
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it's what you're interested in doing. From there, I think you guys are going to have to
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help me understand exactly what people need. Normally we message Ee or someone similar
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to help people get the right permissions. Does that address it?
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[Adam]: I think the only issue we really had was with the Bengali translation, but I
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think we're basically good to go otherwise.
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[Jeff]: spoke with Irvan Putra interested in Indonesian translation, has a
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[pull request (python/devguide#1567)](https://github.com/python/devguide/pull/1567) open
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and raised a question about removing a coordinator. Is it necessary to define a
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procedure for someone to stop being a coordinator?
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[Carol]: I think that if someone doesn't want to be a coordinator anymore, they should
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make a PR removing themselves from the group of coordinators and let everyone know that
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it's something they're no longer interested in. The goal of a coordinator is to create
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documentation in a target language, not to give you specific authority. If there are
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conflicts, as there sometimes are, we'll work through them, and we'll continue on. If
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anyone has any specific things that they'd like to see in the Dev Guide, @ mention me
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[Carol] and we'll take a look.
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[Petr]: Over the years, since seeing [PEP 1](https://peps.python.org/pep-0001/), I've
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learned the rules for submitting a successful PEP, but we are lacking a formal document
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on exactly how to submit and a PEP approved by the EB.
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[Adam]: It might be useful to add an explicit "what's this document meant to achieve"
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section to the PEP. Carol said: we want translations to happen, we don't want process to
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happen. Rules are important because they guide, but we need to keep in mind their
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rigidity.
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### Backporting large changes to 3.13
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[Petr]: This is a bit like pushing directly to production. Should we change the policy,
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so we keep large non-fix docs changes in pre-release branches? I wonder if it would be
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prudent to limit how we release these large blocks, as there's not enough time to debug
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if there are issues.
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[Carol]: Are we only talking about large document fixes, or only backporting one or two
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releases?
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[Petr]: Yes. If you restructure the text, add some new sections, or something similar.
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[Carol]: Is it related to page structure, content, or both?
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[Petr]: Content as well.
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[Adam]: To take the contrary opinion, I think the view I've always taken for docs
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changes is if it is, say, rewording a note or rewording something to make it more
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readable, as long as everything in that change still exists in the backport versions, an
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improvement is an improvement. The analytics show that a lot more people use /3 and the
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default version of the docs than specifically picking a version. If we've made a quality
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of life improvement, we should be trying to put that in front of people as quickly as
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reasonably possible. In general, better to get things out faster as long as they improve
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the experience. Delaying backporting structural changes may make it harder to edit
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later.
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[Ned]: I agree with Adam that there's not much harm in backporting docs changes. Even
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though Petr compared it to pushing directly to prod, I think it's not quite the same
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because we shouldn't compare code and docs. We want to make sure that we don't impact
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the drift between differences too much.
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[Petr]: If you fix a typo or reword a sentence, all of the translations are immediately
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null and void. They will then revert to English, and that's something that we need to
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keep in mind as well.
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[Carol]: Yes, yes. I think we should put in the devguide that if there's a large docs
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PR, please take into consideration prior to backporting what the translation impact
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might be and on the backported versions. Overall, I think you seem to be in agreement.
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The last thing we want to do is mess up the translations, so I think that continuing to
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discuss is a good idea. I will leave it in your capable hands, Petr.
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### Other topics
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- [Ee]: Want to discuss future of docsbuild infrastructure!
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We're moving more and more PSF infra to Kubernetes. We'll need the doc build server to
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move as well, and it looks like it'll be more work than a simple Django app. What amount
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of pain is there around the docs builds?
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The existing docs build scripts do provide an interesting interface. As long as the
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scripts are doing what the maintainers want, parallelizing them should be an easy task.
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In some future, a push could trigger build tasks that build docs which are pushed to
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object storage. [...]
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What's the need? What can we do in the short term? What's the long term plan?
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[Blaise] I'm familiar with the build process for Read the Docs, but this is different?
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[Ee]: Yes, the system runs on cron and ad-hoc jobs. The scripts are in
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[python/docsbuild-scripts](https://github.com/python/docsbuild-scripts)
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[Adam]: Performance has significantly improved. We do less now: we used to build HTML,
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E-pub, Latex[A4], Latex[letter], texinfo etc across versions and translations. Now we
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run 3 streams: all translations (round trip every 24 hours), non-HTML English (2× a
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day), HTML English (every ~30min). Would be very receptive to moving to a push-based
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approach. Currently it's just about fast enough that docs are done when CI is finished.
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People who have access: release managers, Adam, Julien. Fairly small number of people
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who would need to change their workflows. I have no experience with Kubernetes, but
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would absolutely love to go to a multicore [scalable?] system.
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[Ee]: Familiar enough with docs builds from supporting it for years. Ultimately, the
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output is a directory of files. We should be able to treat that as an interface. You
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tell a service what to invoke, and [...] what to serve. We'd need to find someone to
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help build out the infrastructure -- react to pushes, start the scripts, collect output.
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[Adam]: There are some manual tasks -- a version going end-of-life, adding switchers to
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old versions.
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[Petr]: Read the Docs? How far along are we in that migration?
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[Adam]: I did go through and get a list of issues re: how our model differs from RtD
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expectations, I might have another go at figuring out how to reconcile the approaches.
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[Carol]: We need to involve the relevant people - Manuel, Adam, Petr, release managers,
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etc.
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### A tutorial aimed at beginners to _programming_ and Python?
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[Joe] Wrote a lot of docs like that in bootcamps and various education. People new to
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programming have various expectations. Do we want to start with how programmers think?
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How to define a variable? 2+2=4?
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[Carol]: I have some thoughts, but I'd like to hear from more people who have done this
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before.
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[Trey]: Get people into it, then explain things as you get to them.
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[Kattni]: From my experience, the big problem was that it was written for people who are
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already programmers. The tutorial needs to be constructed in a manner that people want
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to do it. If it's not catchy to a beginner, people won't want to do it. That needs to
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speak to where we start and how we move through the tutorial. My experience is not
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making it through the tutorial; I added a note that it's not for programmer beginners.
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We have a lot of beginner tutorials on the net, but I went to the official one. I think
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we need to provide something on python.org.
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[Keith]: The outreach WG is interested [...] When I've tried to teach friends
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programming, they didn't want to learn programming, they wanted to solve a problem.
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Thinking about small projects that have a quick loop from a skeleton to a complete
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project. Those can all funnel to the existing tutorial. To answer "who is the audience":
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you have "bubbles" of interests that all funnel to a standardized tutorial that Kattni
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was envisioning.
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[Carol]: I'll talk about it as pathways to Python rather than a beginner tutorial. When
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I was helping people fabricate ideas (including with code), I saw people who could code
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but did not see themselves as coding. I told them how they can do something interesting
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in five lines of Python or less. When I try to do something I approach it through music.
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There's no one size fits all, it's how you apply your skills. The current tutorial
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serves people who are already developers. There's a need to democratize pathways to
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computational thinking. The core team probably isn't the right team to drive this.
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[Ned]: I like hearing all the ideas about how this could be approach. Not sure how to
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form a group that could move in one direction.
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[Trey]: I like the radical approach, but I'm afraid that it might end up as a "very big
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thing" that would hold us back. Maybe the tutorial should be "the second-best tutorial"
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for everyone.
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[Bartos]: The general point is that Python has a lot of different use cases and
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audiences. Everyone has different backgrounds and interests. I'd like a tutorial to be
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at the intersection at all these paths. Maybe we shouldn't answer all questions for all
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the paths. I like Raymond's talk about chunking and aliasing.
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[Adam]: Think about adding a list of tutorials to the index. Make it easier to jump
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around. Think about Diátaxis. We should cover `match`, not necessarily data science.

docs/monthly-meeting/index.rst

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Mar 2025 <2025-03.md>
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Apr 2025 <2025-04.md>
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May 2025 <2025-05.md>
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Jun 2025 <2025-06.md>

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