On Dec 26 2009, 2:06 pm, Tim Golden <m...@timgolden.me.uk> wrote: > I'm trying to work up a programming course using Python, > aimed at secondary school students [*] here in London. One > of my aims is to have a series of compact but functional > examples, each demonstrating a particular field in which > Python (and programming) can be useful. > > I'm trying to come up with something which will illustrate > the usefulness of a distributed processing model. Since I > may not be using the term "distributed" exactly, my > criteria are: > > * It should be clear that the application produces results > sooner when run via multiple cooperating computers > than when run on one. > > * The problem being solved should be broadly comprehensible by > the students. This rules out some abstruse mathematical > calculation which would benefit from multiple processors but > which will fail to engage their interest. > > * I don't mind using / installing some library as a black box > so long as the other criteria are met. This is at least partly > because I want the code to be compact and I'm quite happy to > point to a library call and say "this does the hard work". > > I'm not asking anyone to write code: what I'm after is some sort > of problem space which will meet my criteria. Part of the issue > is that computers are just so fast these days that almost anything > I can come up with can be managed so quickly on one laptop that > the overhead of distribution (or of the IO) will dwarf the benefits > of distributing. > > The kind of things I've considered briefly include: speech recognition; > image analysis; large scale indexing (effectively: building a search > engine). At present I'm looking at that last one, not least because I > have little knowledge of the other domains so there's a overhead for > me in setting the example up. > > Any suggestions, either from your own experience of something similar, > or from sheer inspiration, will be gratefully received. > > Thanks > > TJG > > [*] roughly, ages 14-18
I think distributed transcoding of hi-def videos would be cool, but I haven't found much with Google. Still, you might find this useful for your project: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/AsynCluster/0.3 For reasons I don't understand, the home page listed in that link is blocked here. ------------------- Mike Driscoll Blog: http://blog.pythonlibrary.org PyCon 2010 Atlanta Feb 19-21 http://us.pycon.org/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
