[Melbourne-pm] [Maybe Spam] August's meeting

[leif.eriksen@hpa.com.au]

jarich at perltraining.com.au wrote:

> You could walk us through creating tests to achieve 100% 
>coverage. 
>
You talkin' to me ?

> Perhaps you'd like to show us some of your favourite debugging tips, 
>editor hacks, or useful tools.
>
>
>  
>
I'm thinking of presenting a talk at OSDC on iterative grammar 
development by combining Test::More and Parse::RecDescent - in other 
words, bottom-up development of P::RD grammars, based on simplistic 
application of eXtreme Programmings 'Test-First' idea. I found this to 
be extremely powerful for writing a complex data validator (that was 
ultimately junked as the client could never decide what was and was not 
valid...sigh).
My problems in writing this are several
1. I am not an expert in grammars - I dont even really know what LR and 
LL imply - hence my academic credentials for this most academic of 
subjects are shot to pieces
2. Theres a lot of terminology and theory behind P::RD, not all of which 
I understand
3. I tried once before to write a talk on this, and it was so dry and 
dull and long I just gave up...

So if I hear a clamoring of people saying 'personally I stay at home on 
Saturday nights, just so as I can polish my P::RD grammar, so your talk 
sounds like 45 minutes of bliss', then I'll try again.

-- 
Leif Eriksen
Snr Developer
http://www.hpa.com.au/
phone: +61 3 9217 5545
email: leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au