Shlomi, in order that you will not kill me, I've uploaded the presentation I gave: http://www.slideshare.net/ik5/ruby-for-perl-developers
Ido LINESIP - Opening the source for communication http://www.linesip.com http://www.linesip.co.il On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 22:08, Shlomi Fish <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > here are my impressions and thoughts from the last Tel Aviv Perl Mongers in > no > particular order: > > 1. Miss Ferret's presentation about Typography was captivating, fun, and > funny, but I kinda felt that I had already known most of what she said > there > already by intuition. However, now I know that I was right. :-) I'm looking > forward for her future talks, if there will be. > > 2. On the way to the grocery store I told Sawyer that I will kill Ran if he > doesn't make his slides available this time. (Or outsource the dirty job to > a > hired Assassin or some בן-בליעל - I wonder if offshore outsourcing will > work > in this case ;-)). Ran escaped by not using any slides today and just > showing > source code. > > On the other hand, he said something that we shouldn't provide screencasts > and/or video recordings because that way people won't want to attend the > physical meetings. I think that's the wrong way to think about it, because > by > giving videos, screencasts, audio recordings, transcripts or whatever, we > are > actually publicising our meetings and creating buzz around them. It's like > those artists who distribute their songs or even entire albums online (or > even > just expect them to be watched on youtube, torrented, etc.) and then go on > tours, and earn a lot of money from selling tickets, swag, etc. > > As I read on the Creative Commons blog once, the main threat for an artist > (or > a club for that matter) is not piracy - it's obscurity. > > 3. One thing I disliked about Ran's code is the overuse of Roles. For > crying > out loud, he even a point was a role. http://search.cpan.org/~mstrout/ > complained about RoR that it was originally written by a PHP programmer who > learned Ruby, said "Classes… shiny!!" and then went to overuse them. In a > similar way, on a recent job, our CTO was impressed by git's cheap and > convenient branching capability, and decided on implementing every feature > or > bug on a separate branch, which was overusing this (otherwise great) > feature > of git. So I think now Ran kinda said "Roles… shiny!!". > > 4. I referenced what Larry Wall said here: http://xrl.us/bhks6t : > > <blockquote> > I think that ordinary people dislike abstraction. That's because I dislike > abstraction and I think I'm ordinary. (laughter) I might be wrong about > that, > but I don't know. > </blockquote> > > Naturally, in this case, I think that writing things directly using SDL is > not > such a good idea, because it's very low-level and inconvenient, but you > should > treat such a library as an API and not an abstraction. Some of the most > popular CPAN modules are APIs: > > * http://search.cpan.org/dist/libwww-perl/ > > * http://search.cpan.org/dist/XML-LibXML/ > > * http://search.cpan.org/search?query=json&mode=all > > * http://search.cpan.org/dist/GD/ > > Etc. etc. > > There are also many meta-syntactic or abstraction modules (such as Coro, > Moose, Autobox, Class-Accessor, Error.pm->Try::Tiny, etc. etc.) but these > are > more controversial, in part because people feel that they'd rather stick to > plain-old Perl. > > I feel that one of the thing that killed languages such as Common Lisp in > most > everyday use (see: > http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ ) is that the core language is not usable > as > is, and was meant as a base to build abstractions upon abstractions above > it. > No one has the energy to do that. > > 5. We didn't stay to the café eventually and instead each one of us went on > their way. I escorted some people on their way to the train (could not get > a > ride) and then went on to cross the bridge and caught a bus. > > 6. Ido's presentation about Ruby for Perl programmers was good. It reminded > me > of szabgab's presentations about Perl 6 of showing many small and trivial > things that were very different but still cool. > > 7. Sawyer was good as usual with his "use" vs. "require". Hopefully the > slides > will be online. > > 8. We discussed XML vs. JSON vs. YAML for configuration file format. I > mentioned http://search.cpan.org/dist/Config-Settings/ which was an > upcoming > competitor to Config-General (user-friendly but quirky and buggy) and to > YAML > (positively huge, complicated and quirky) and it seemed very nice when I > read > its syntax description. So I would recommend using that. > > I mentioned that while XML usually sucks for configuration file formats, it > is > a good choice for a case where you have something like: > > [XML] > > <saying character="David">Goliath: I'm going to kill you in the name of <a > xlink:href="http://wikip.tld/the-lord";>the LORD</a> all mighty and all > powerful</saying> > > [/XML] > > Here, it is mostly based on text and uses text and also sub-parts of the > text > are marked in a different markup. People showed me how they encoded this as > S- > expressions, but I might as well encode everything using 1's and 0's or > program everything using NAND gates. > > For http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/XML-Grammar/Fiction/ I > defined several well-formed and strict plaintext-based grammars (with some > embedded XML-like tags), and then converted them into a custom XML format, > which in turn is translated using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSLT > stylesheets into XHTML, DocBook/XML and/or XSL-FO. "All problems in > computer > science can be solved by another level of indirection" (see: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirection ). XML-Grammar-Fortune is > maintained > by using XML directly, and it's OK so far, and naturally, I don't think > that > HTML/XHTML or DocBook/XML can be effectively written using YAML, JSON or S- > expressions. Everything has its place in the world. > > 9. Insert your thoughts here. > > ------------------------------ > > BTW, my sister told me of this movie, whose title at least may appeal to > many > computer geeks: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code > > It's a techno-thriller, and seems interesting based on the plot summary on > the > wikipedia, and is already in theatres in Israel. My quote at the bottom is > also appropriate. > > Regards, > > Shlomi Fish > > -- > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ > Chuck Norris/etc. Facts - http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/ > > I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code. > -- Unknown > > Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . > _______________________________________________ > Perl mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.perl.org.il/mailman/listinfo/perl
_______________________________________________ Perl mailing list [email protected] http://mail.perl.org.il/mailman/listinfo/perl
