SUMMARY: first meeting

[Walter Pienciak]

The meeting lasted from about 6 to 8 at Casa Alvarez.
The food was pretty good, but the consensus seemed to be
that variety was nice, and so we'll be trying somewhere
else next time.

We came in serendipitously during happy hour -- there were
2-for-1 specials -- the result being that the two of us who
ordered pints of Fat Tire each got two mugs.  Efficient, but
visually jarring (a two-fisted drinker, I am).  The waiters
were also kept busy refilling water and iced-tea glasses while
we downed the chips/salsa.

Eight people showed up.  The conversations were wide-ranging,
and included some basic "who are you" stuff.  A "How did you
learn Perl?" thread got started but then morphed into a
discussion of meteorology.  (The general pattern, as I recall,
was self-learning via Randal Schwartz's "Learning Perl".)
Not everyone there already knows Perl, so I guess the above-
referenced book is a resource recommendation.  (That, and this
list -- questions are good -- and the meetings.)

Hmmm.  There was a fair amount of Java bashing (fairly informed,
not wild-eyed), a discussion on the merits of object-oriented Perl,
a question about and then some experiences with DBI, reminiscing
about other languages and their common points with Perl.  There
was an ongoing "life along the Front Range" thread.  Lots of
talk about Linux, the various distributions, and stories about
companies moving significant resources onto that platform.

Someone asked about recreational versus professional use of Perl.
I don't use it much recreationally, but on the other hand, I
learned it recreationally -- and the stuff I used to do for
"fun" I now get paid for.  So is that recreational or professional?

I dunno.  I'm sure I forgot a bunch of stuff, and I have to go be
productive now.  Someone else send more details, if you can remember
them.

Walter

__
"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could
 produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the 
 Internet, we know this is not true."
-- Robert Wilensky, University of California