lun. 17 octobre 2016

Hi everyone,

PyCon-FR 2016, the French Python annual gathering, was held last week-end in Rennes, and I had the pleasure to be there. We discussed lots of interesting tricks of the trade and perspectives related to Python, software engineering and even research ! Let's dig into what I found interesting during these two days.

Mapping Learning

I was pleased to discover this small piece of Python software developed by Alban Thomas from the University of Rennes 2. Mapping Learning is a tool to help non-tech-savy people use machine learning for mapping aerial and satellite images. It is based on scikit-learn, reads tons of file formats and is able to perform lots of supervised or unsupervised processing (such as clustering, SVM classification, ...). Moreover, it generates standardized reports with helpful advices to evaluate the accuracy of the final map. So, I you want to work with satellite images to extract meaningful information such as buildings footprints, vegetation types, etc. then take a look to Mapping Learning.

Translating the Python docs to French

As French teachers are starting to teach more and more Python (it is now mandatory when preparing the exams for engineering schools), the need to translate the official Python docs grows further. Not all Python beginners are fluent in English, especially considered the technical language used in the docs. Learning two languages (Python and English) at the same can put quite a strain on the learning capabilities of those who want to learn Python. The French translation project is coming up nicely, although it still needs lots of volunteers to cover the whole documentation.

Deep Learning with Python

Well, I might be biased, but I found that we spoke quite a lot about deep learning and machine learning using Python during this week-end. I gave a talk about the basics of deep learning and how to start playing with toy neural networks in Keras, while Julien Guillaumin supervised a tutorial about getting to work with Theano. Deep learning is becoming easier and easier !

Category: conference