From grant at mclean.net.nz Tue Apr 2 00:55:26 2013 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:55:26 +1300 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Meeting next Tuesday Message-ID: <1364889326.2283.3.camel@kereru> Hi Mongers The next meeting of Wellington Perl Mongers is next Tuesday - April 9th. 6:00pm Tuesday 9 April 2013 Level 3, Catalyst House 150 Willis Street Wellington http://wellington.pm.org/ I'm still keen to hear from anyone who would like to speak or anyone who would like to suggest a topic. Cheers Grant From florent at nzregen.co.nz Wed Apr 3 20:12:30 2013 From: florent at nzregen.co.nz (Florent Mara) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2013 03:12:30 +0000 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Meeting next Tuesday In-Reply-To: <1364889326.2283.3.camel@kereru> References: <1364889326.2283.3.camel@kereru> Message-ID: <5BED8F8BD323214D871A9ADB7FF8DDCECC8E47FF@Harmony.medialab.local> Hi Grant, I would be very interested if a Mongers evening could provide me with more insight behind Perl not being a 'sexy programming language'. While Perl has immense power and amazes me more every time I discover a new useful package, mentioning "Perl" to software developers has most of them display facial expressions not dissimilar those of people smelling Durian for the first time. Usually followed by to strongly worded derogatory opinions about Perl. Over the years, I have myself attempted to compile quite a few explanations being the lack of Perl appeal * Ignorance from a large part of the software development community. Java is taught at University, Perl rarely is. * Absence of any renowned 'trendy' Perl usage. (for ex, LinkedIn back-end hasn't been implemented using Perl tech, Android SDK doesn't cater for Perl) * absence of widely used IDE (for ex, as opposed to Eclipse for Java) * absence of widely known/used Perl based system (as opposed to, say, JBoss) * Ability of coding very ugly/hard to maintain Perl (as opposed once again to Java which enforces a pre-determined structure) which unfortunately tends to get more exposure than 'maintainable' Perl coding due to coding contests. * ... * * potentially the Perl developer community being near the 'geekest' part of the soft dev population makes it un-attractive to the masses. :-) As I have been mainly developing Perl code on my own, I don't think I have the best understanding of the space/community but it worries me that: 1) we struggle to hire any Perl developers. 2) mention of Perl has most software developers looking for jobs running away fast often stating "I don't like Perl and will never code in Perl". 3) Most consultants queried about the issue do not consider Perl as viable in the medium to long term. 4) In the absence of resource to crack Perl code, it will disappear from where I work while being perfectly suited for the task in hand. 5) ... and I think my curiosity isn't completely dissimilar to you wondering why we don't have more people at the Perl Mongers meetings. Please let me know if such topic could be of interest for Mongers evening, either for a presentation or potentially for a conversation between attendees. Despite Evan's good work, the writing is getting everyday closer to the wall for Perl where I work. Best regards, Florent Florent Mara Technical Lead Regen Ltd DDI +64 4 381 4451 -----Original Message----- From: Wellington-pm [mailto:wellington-pm-bounces+florent=nzregen.co.nz at pm.org] On Behalf Of Grant McLean Sent: Tuesday, 2 April 2013 8:55 p.m. To: Wellington Perl Mongers Subject: [Wellington-pm] Meeting next Tuesday Hi Mongers The next meeting of Wellington Perl Mongers is next Tuesday - April 9th. 6:00pm Tuesday 9 April 2013 Level 3, Catalyst House 150 Willis Street Wellington http://wellington.pm.org/ I'm still keen to hear from anyone who would like to speak or anyone who would like to suggest a topic. Cheers Grant _______________________________________________ Wellington-pm mailing list Wellington-pm at pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/wellington-pm ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3267 / Virus Database: 3161/6219 - Release Date: 04/01/13 From grant at mclean.net.nz Fri Apr 5 13:25:53 2013 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2013 09:25:53 +1300 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Meeting Rescheduled - not Tuesday In-Reply-To: <1364889326.2283.3.camel@kereru> References: <1364889326.2283.3.camel@kereru> Message-ID: <1365193553.27852.11.camel@kereru> Hi Mongers The wonderful Paul Fenwick will be visiting Wellington and has offered to do a talk for Wellington Perl Mongers. This means we've adjusted our schedule to fit in with Paul's travel plans. So, the April meeting has been rescheduled. It will no longer be on Tuesday the 9th, but instead will be on Wednesday the 17th (that's the following week). 6:00pm Wednesday 17 April 2013 Level 3, Catalyst House 150 Willis Street Wellington http://wellington.pm.org/ Paul Fenwick (@pjf) is a regular (and popular!) speaker at conferences including OSCON, linux.conf.au and OSDC. He's also a Perl trainer and CPAN author. Paul's talk, entitled "The Perl Renaissance" will cover: * Overhauling Perl's Object Oriented framework with Moose. * Using MooseX::Method::Signatures for beautiful classes. * Building web applications using Dancer * Not worrying about web servers by using Plack. * Critiquing your code with Perl::Critic * Write amazing regexps with named captures. * Install new modules quickly and easily with cpanminus * Manage Perl installations easily with perlbrew * A whole swag of new features with perl 5.10?5.16 * Much, much more! Everyone is welcome, no registration is required - simply turn up at 6:00pm and bring friends and workmates along. Please forward this announcement to anyone you think may be interested. Regards Grant From grant at mclean.net.nz Fri Apr 5 21:42:39 2013 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:42:39 +1300 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Meeting next Tuesday In-Reply-To: <5BED8F8BD323214D871A9ADB7FF8DDCECC8E47FF@Harmony.medialab.local> References: <1364889326.2283.3.camel@kereru> <5BED8F8BD323214D871A9ADB7FF8DDCECC8E47FF@Harmony.medialab.local> Message-ID: <1365223359.27852.76.camel@kereru> On Thu, 2013-04-04 at 03:12 +0000, Florent Mara wrote: > On Thu, 2013-04-02 at 20:55 +0000, Grant McLean wrote: >> I'm still keen to hear from anyone who would like to speak or anyone >> who would like to suggest a topic. >> > Hi Grant, > > I would be very interested if a Mongers evening could provide me with > more insight behind Perl not being a 'sexy programming language'. I'm wondering if your interest is not so much *why* Perl is not a fashionable language, but what we can do to fix that. Answering the 'why' is very difficult because many people who have a low opinion of Perl don't know the language at all. There isn't really a reason that they dislike Perl other than it is fashionable to dislike Perl. I'm not suggesting that there aren't valid reasons to dislike Perl. I'm sure many regular Perl programmers could list things they dislike about the language. My personal list would start with: 1. lack of function/method signatures in the language 2. exception handling is harder than it should be As to what we can do to 'fix' Perl's image problem my first suggestion would be to build awesome things using Perl (which I believe you're already doing) and then tell people about them. My second suggestion would be that people who are new to Perl need support. If you can find someone who is prepared to give it a go then support them with training. Encourage them to get along to Perl Mongers, ask questions on the mailing list or IRC channel and engage in online forums like PerlMonks. One concrete step is to come along to Paul Fenwick's talk on April 17th. He will specifically be talking about things that have been happening in the Perl world recently that address some specific shortcomings of Perl as a language and Perl+CPAN as a platform. I can guarantee that even non-Perl people will find Paul's talk entertaining and at $0 it's a pretty cheap night out. > As I have been mainly developing Perl code on my own, I don't think I > have the best understanding of the space/community but it worries me > that: > 1) we struggle to hire any Perl developers. Indeed but it's also very hard to find good Python or Ruby developers. And even though universities churn out large numbers of people who have been exposed to Java, that doesn't make them 'good' Java programmers. I haven't anything to do with the Microsoft development languages for many years but it used to be common for MS developers to get training and certifications and regular product updates. But strangely there's an expectation that it ought to be possible to pick up Perl programmers who just know it all already. > 2) mention of Perl has most software developers looking for jobs > running away fast often stating "I don't like Perl and will never code > in Perl". Are these people who have coded in Perl? If not, a training and support plan could help. If they're not interested in learning, they're probably not going to make good programmers anyway. > 3) Most consultants queried about the issue do not consider Perl as > viable in the medium to long term. Do they give specific reasons for these beliefs? If our industry is not training more Perl programmers because "Perl is dying" then it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy and Perl will die. Realistically, Perl, Python and Ruby are pretty much interchangeable and all offer similar libraries for similar tasks. Someone who is competent in one of these languages could be cross-trained to any of the others. I didn't include Java in that list. Not because it's bad, but because it's very different from the 'dynamic languages'. In my (somewhat limited) experience Java projects tend to be bigger and more costly. Whereas programmers using dynamic languages are expected to achieve more with less. I also didn't include PHP in the list because I consider it to be specifically for web applications whereas the other options are general purpose programming languages. > 4) In the absence of resource to crack Perl code, it will disappear > from where I work while being perfectly suited for the task in hand. And your company will incur significant costs in time and money rewriting the application in a different language. How would that compare with the cost of training and developing programmers to work on the existing codebase? > 5) ... and I think my curiosity isn't completely dissimilar to you > wondering why we don't have more people at the Perl Mongers meetings. I completely agree. > Please let me know if such topic could be of interest for Mongers > evening, either for a presentation or potentially for a conversation > between attendees. Well if someone would like to present on how they've managed to solve this problem then I'd love to hear that talk :-) Otherwise, this might be a good topic of conversation for the mid-year social meeting (i.e. Wellington.pm at the pub). Regards Grant From grant at mclean.net.nz Sun Apr 14 19:42:33 2013 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:42:33 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Reminder: Paul Fenwick talk this Wednesday Message-ID: <1365993753.2711.22.camel@putnam.wgtn.cat-it.co.nz> Hi All Just a reminder that the Paul Fenwick talk is on this *Wednesday* at the usual place and time (details below). Please invite colleagues/friends who may be interested. Regards Grant -------- Forwarded Message -------- > From: Grant McLean > To: wellington-pm at pm.org > Subject: Meeting Rescheduled - not Tuesday > Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2013 09:25:53 +1300 > > Hi Mongers > > The wonderful Paul Fenwick will be visiting Wellington and has offered > to do a talk for Wellington Perl Mongers. This means we've adjusted our > schedule to fit in with Paul's travel plans. > > So, the meeting has been rescheduled to Wednesday, April 17th > > 6:00pm Wednesday 17 April 2013 > Level 3, Catalyst House > 150 Willis Street > Wellington > http://wellington.pm.org/ > > Paul Fenwick (@pjf) is a regular (and popular!) speaker at conferences > including OSCON, linux.conf.au and OSDC. He's also a Perl trainer and > CPAN author. Paul's talk, entitled "The Perl Renaissance" will cover: > > * Overhauling Perl's Object Oriented framework with Moose. > * Using MooseX::Method::Signatures for beautiful classes. > * Building web applications using Dancer > * Not worrying about web servers by using Plack. > * Critiquing your code with Perl::Critic > * Write amazing regexps with named captures. > * Install new modules quickly and easily with cpanminus > * Manage Perl installations easily with perlbrew > * A whole swag of new features with perl 5.10?5.16 > * Much, much more! > > Everyone is welcome, no registration is required - simply turn up at > 6:00pm and bring friends and workmates along. Please forward this > announcement to anyone you think may be interested. > > Regards > Grant > From grant at mclean.net.nz Tue Apr 16 18:11:31 2013 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:11:31 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Reminder: Paul Fenwick talk this evening! Message-ID: <1366161091.32145.19.camel@putnam.wgtn.cat-it.co.nz> Hi All Just a reminder that the Paul Fenwick talk is on this evening at the usual place and time (details below). Please invite colleagues/friends who may be interested. Regards Grant -------- Forwarded Message -------- > From: Grant McLean > To: wellington-pm at pm.org > Subject: Meeting Rescheduled - not Tuesday > Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2013 09:25:53 +1300 > > Hi Mongers > > The wonderful Paul Fenwick will be visiting Wellington and has offered > to do a talk for Wellington Perl Mongers. This means we've adjusted our > schedule to fit in with Paul's travel plans. > > So, the meeting has been rescheduled to Wednesday, April 17th > > 6:00pm Wednesday 17 April 2013 > Level 3, Catalyst House > 150 Willis Street > Wellington > http://wellington.pm.org/ > > Paul Fenwick (@pjf) is a regular (and popular!) speaker at conferences > including OSCON, linux.conf.au and OSDC. He's also a Perl trainer and > CPAN author. Paul's talk, entitled "The Perl Renaissance" will cover: > > * Overhauling Perl's Object Oriented framework with Moose. > * Using MooseX::Method::Signatures for beautiful classes. > * Building web applications using Dancer > * Not worrying about web servers by using Plack. > * Critiquing your code with Perl::Critic > * Write amazing regexps with named captures. > * Install new modules quickly and easily with cpanminus > * Manage Perl installations easily with perlbrew > * A whole swag of new features with perl 5.10?5.16 > * Much, much more! > > Everyone is welcome, no registration is required - simply turn up at > 6:00pm and bring friends and workmates along. Please forward this > announcement to anyone you think may be interested. > > Regards > Grant > From hugh at davenport.net.nz Thu Apr 25 19:12:05 2013 From: hugh at davenport.net.nz (Hugh Davenport) Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:12:05 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Fwd: [wellylug] WellyLUG Social Meetup Message-ID: Sorry for the cross posting. See below for details of the first WellyLUG meeting in a while... 15 year anniversary as well -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [wellylug] WellyLUG Social Meetup Date: 2013-04-26 11:35 From: Hugh Davenport To: Wellington Linux Users Group Reply-To: Wellington Linux Users Group Hi All, I'm organising a social meetup for WellyLUG, with a meeting planned for the month after. As the first ever WellyLUG meeting was on 13th of May 15 years ago [1], I suggest having the meeting then. Unfortunately I won't be available then (I'll be pretending to be harry potter wearing a gown with some pansy colours...), but can join later in said gown. If you all gather around a popular beer bar called LBQ [2] any time after 5pm. They have excellent food [3], and many drinks. I shall aim to join at ... some point later ... but I'm sure you can make social niceties by yourselves. Make this meeting a good one, as it is the 15th Anniversary of the start of WellyLUG!!! Cheers, Hugh [1] https://groups.google.com/d/topic/nz.reg.wellington.general/b2rvWgTSBCU/discussion [2] http://littlebeerquarter.co.nz/