[Chicago-talk] theft is good

Ed Summers ehs at pobox.com
Thu Feb 19 08:12:19 CST 2004


On Tue, Feb 17, 2004 at 12:40:04PM -0800, Jim Thomason wrote:
> So what about everyone else? Any other
> tips/tricks/techniques/etc that you've swiped from
> another language or environment and use in perl now?

It's funny I guess I'm spoiled: the only language I've done lots of 
development in is Perl. Since Perl borrows lots from other languages
I imagine I've probably been borrowing without even knowing it :)

I do read lots, and it often seems like Java is lingua franca for techbooks
these days. So I've picked up lots of OO terminology that way.

Lately I've been enjoying reading about the pattern movement (which has lots 
of parallels to what your email was about).  While it's a book about 
architecture The Timeless Way of Building was a really beautiful book, that 
has lots of inspiring stuff in it for programmer folks. 

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195024028

TWoB really changed the way I think about creating and maintaining software.
And for how groups of people can create software.

Another book that informed my Perl programming alot is The Little Schemer, 
which is an inventive look at the Scheme programming language. 

    http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/

The book changed forever the way I look at list context in Perl. And it made
things like the Schwwartzian transform fit my brain even better. 

I was in irc on #perl the other day and I overheard waltman saying he was 
planning a talk about Perl & Ruby for YAPC this year. You should *really* 
consider proposing a talk about Objective C. If you are interested perhaps
you could try it out on us first in May?

//Ed

-- 
Ed Summers
aim: inkdroid
web: http://www.inkdroid.org



More information about the Chicago-talk mailing list