Why am I going to CodeMash?

By this time tomorrow I will doubtless be wearing swimming trunks — in northern Ohio — in winter — while listening to people rave about Java and C# and Ruby and wondering what I have gotten myself into. I will be at CodeMash, a conference that was started by developers who wanted an event that focused solely on the programmer while including a wide range of languages and technologies.

It was lucky that I signed up the moment that CodeMash 2012 registration opened back in October, because the 1,200 conference tickets sold out in only 20 minutes — no event in the Python community had prepared me for that kind of demand!

I learned about CodeMash conference from its co-founder Brian Prince when we were fellow speakers at PyOhio last July. So why did a Python programmer like me decide to attend?

• Even though the technologies that Brian chooses are different from mine, he is clearly animated by the same passion for combining good code with good community. If his co-founders are at all like him, then I knew that a great event was in the works.
• I want to learn another conference's culture. For example, I was stunned to see strong suggestions on the CodeMash mailing list that attendees should not carry laptops — instead, they recommend pencil, paper, and something they call Sketchnotes. Since good teachers have a reflex that makes them try to bring the whole audience along with them as they make a point, we could actually be slowing up PyCon speakers when half the audience is face-down typing and clearly a half step behind what is being said.

• I could predict that moving to Bluffton, Ohio, as winter descended would leave me with very few opportunities to meet other developers. After several weeks of being the only programmer I know, a large regional conference will let me bask in the company of other people who understand what I do for a living.
• It is too easy to judge other languages by what I think are drawbacks in their design, or by the poor code that most programmers produce whatever their language. I want see what excites the real experts who solve interesting problems using Java, Ruby, and C# — people who use those languages to the hilt, and do a great job of it.
• Being evangelized by smart people is interesting and humbling, if you let down your guard and really listen. And hearing Ruby and C# people explain the glories of their languages will remind me of how I must sound when I hold forth on the advantages of Python, or Emacs, or Vibram Fivefingers.

• Brian wants to make CodeMash more popular for Python programmers — and a few luminaries like Bruce Eckel, Mike Pirnat, and Mark Ramm are already on the schedule this year. Next year I might offer to speak. But first I wanted to show up and just listen, figure out the vibe of the conference, and learn more about what is happening outside of the Python community.
• Finally, it does sound like great fun: eating, drinking, and being merry at an indoor water park resort in the middle of an Ohio winter. Kalahari, here I come!

(Images are Creative Commons licensed from Flickr photographers iriskh and Alan.Barber.)