Hi all, this is a top-of-my-head report on the last Tel Aviv Perl Mongers meeting. I think people should write them more often and it took me almost a week to write it (“Bad programmer! No Cookie!!!”), but here goes:
1. This time I decided against buying snacks before the meeting, and no one volunteered to do it instead. Someone shared some crusted peanuts he bought, and someone else bought Bisli (= an Israeli snack) and also shared it (and I got to keep the package for the Bisli laptops' raffle), but otherwise we did not really eat anything. I hope someone volunteers to buy snacks next time. 2. I finally got to know who Ynon was, because he was presenting his JavaScript talk. Before the talk, I saw that there was "Javascript" written on the first slide, and I commented to him that it should be "JavaScript" with a Capital "S". He said I was write, but that he was unable to correct it because he used Google Docs to edit the presentation, and only had a PDF and did not have any Internet connectivity. I think that's one of the problems of trusting remote Internet-based applications like that. 3. The aforementioned talk that Ynon gave was interesting and introduced us to many of the quirks of the JS language. It gave me some fodder for my JavaScript page on my home page ( http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/javascript/ ) and I hope to cover the slides to learn more. I discovered many other quirks of JS while working on porting my ABC Path solver and generator from Perl to JS (I plan to use them in a web browser client-side environment). 4. Ynon claimed that "JavaScript has no real relation to Java.", but that's not true, because JavaScript's syntax resembles Java's and in fact it was chosen to be used for scripting Netscape 2.0 instead of all of the other present scripting language because their syntax did not resemble Java's. Moreover, as he demonstrated, it has some reserved keywords (some of which don't do anything) that are also reserved in Java. 5. There was some discussion about the difference between “null” and “undefined” in JavaScript, whereas Perl only has “undef” for that, and which values would be false in JS. 6. Ynon explained about the new keyword in JS, how to make constructors, and the magical behaviour of return in case it is inside a constructor. He said why robust constructors don't depend on new being specified but rather return a new object in any case. 7. After the JS talk, came Gabor's talk about preparing a module for CPAN. Gabor took an old module that he found that still had many remnants of its history, and gradually whipped it into shape by removing *.html files, fixing the Makefile.PL, and converting the test.pl "use Test;" script to Test::More. I can share similar sentiments from resurrecting some old CPAN modules, but the module he demonstrated was especially bad. I enjoyed the talk, and although it did not really teach me anything new, it may have taught some people out of the audience. 8. There was a little problem explaining why simply moving a file using "mv" in the git checkout moved it also in git, and I recall getting into a mess once or twice with that. Next time, I think people should simply use git mv instead of depending on git's over-zealous Do-what-I-meannery (DWIMmery). 9. I talked with Meir about the JavaScript vs. LWP/WWW::Mech thread, and also discussed browsers' standards compliance with Moshe. These were interesting conversations. 10. After the talk ended, we decided against going to eat at a restaurant and we went on our ways. I walked with a Meir (a different one) to the bus station, and on the way there we discussed JavaScript testing, http://docs.jquery.com/Qunit and jQuery. ------------- So it was a fun meeting, but I wanted to go to supper afterwards and hope we will resume this tradition. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Chuck Norris/etc. Facts - http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/ My opinions may seem crazy but they all make sense. Insane sense, but sense nonetheless. 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
