From djgoku at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 20:52:50 2007 From: djgoku at gmail.com (djgoku) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 22:52:50 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Book Review -- Learning Perl 4th Edition Message-ID: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> Learning Perl 4th Edition Authors: Randal L. Schwartz, Tome Phoenix & brian d foy ISBN: 0-596-10105-8 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/ Review by Jonathan C. Otsuka Kansas City Perl Mongers http://kc.pm.org 2007-10-04 I have put off this review of Learning Perl 4th Edition for well over a year now. One reason I let this go so long is I didn't think at the time after reading it that I was good enough to write a review about something so new to learn. I know now that this book was only the beginning into learning a new language, and that only reading one book can't make you an expert (and I don't claim to be one yet). After reading Learning Perl. Here are a list of things taught in the book that make me use Perl more and more. Scalar data is a really neat and easy way of storing data used in Perl programs. You don't have to know exactly what type it is going to be an int, char, float, string you just create a variable and store the data unlike you have to do in C/C++. Having an easy way of iterating through arrays or hashes is very simple using a for loop. Hashes are a really neat data structure like arrays which instead of using numbers as indexes you use whatever you like as a index which is then use to retrieve a stored value. Perl is very strong at searching scalar data. Searching strings and matching a particular string is made easy with regular expressions. Another thing which isn't talked about much is CPAN and using modules others have created to make your job as the programmer even easier. I will have to say this book was a very good introduction into Perl (I still use it from time to time as a reference). It has really helped me in getting the basic syntax of Perl down. I would totally recommend this book to anyone that is wanting to begin the journey into programming with Perl. Jonathan From amoore at mooresystems.com Fri Oct 5 06:45:23 2007 From: amoore at mooresystems.com (Andrew Moore) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 08:45:23 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Book Review -- Learning Perl 4th Edition In-Reply-To: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> References: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071005134523.GA2836@mooresystems.com> Thanks, Jonathan! I'm pretty sure that O'Reilly will give a free copy of many of their recent books that they publish to any members who would like to write a book review. If there's one that any of you are interested in reviewing for the group, let me know and I can help you get a copy. -Andy On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 10:52:50PM -0500, djgoku wrote: > Learning Perl 4th Edition > Authors: Randal L. Schwartz, Tome Phoenix & brian d foy > ISBN: 0-596-10105-8 > http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/ > > Review by Jonathan C. Otsuka > Kansas City Perl Mongers > http://kc.pm.org > 2007-10-04 > > I have put off this review of Learning Perl 4th Edition for well over > a year now. One reason I let this go so long is I didn't think at the > time after reading it that I was good enough to write a review about > something so new to learn. I know now that this book was only the > beginning into learning a new language, and that only reading one book > can't make you an expert (and I don't claim to be one yet). > > After reading Learning Perl. Here are a list of things taught in the > book that make me use Perl more and more. > > Scalar data is a really neat and easy way of storing data used in Perl > programs. You don't have to know exactly what type it is going to be > an int, char, float, string you just create a variable and store the > data unlike you have to do in C/C++. > > Having an easy way of iterating through arrays or hashes is very > simple using a for loop. Hashes are a really neat data structure like > arrays which instead of using numbers as indexes you use whatever you > like as a index which is then use to retrieve a stored value. > > Perl is very strong at searching scalar data. Searching strings and > matching a particular string is made easy with regular expressions. > > Another thing which isn't talked about much is CPAN and using modules > others have created to make your job as the programmer even easier. > > I will have to say this book was a very good introduction into Perl (I > still use it from time to time as a reference). It has really helped > me in getting the basic syntax of Perl down. I would totally recommend > this book to anyone that is wanting to begin the journey into > programming with Perl. > > Jonathan > _______________________________________________ > kc mailing list > kc at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc From scottk at uclick.com Fri Oct 5 07:26:03 2007 From: scottk at uclick.com (Scott Kahler) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:26:03 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Where did your perl come from? In-Reply-To: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: This brought to mind a question that comes up every once in awhile. How did you go about learning perl? My experience was that I read the first half of Elements of Programming with Perl and then jumped it. I happened to be in a heavily perl shop and and had a VB6 background. Aside from the basics I got from that book most my learning came from digging through code, flipping back and forth through Perl Cookbook and creating the occasional disaster and asking the "real" hackers questions. If I recall my point of enlightenment in order were 1) variable without types, sweet! 2) damn hashes are cool 3) wow, there is a lot of stuff on CPAN 4) wow, there is a lot of crap on CPAN 5) DBI is good 6) mod_perl 7) template toolkit = love 8) creating module packages is damn handy I'm still working enlightenment via map, the greatness of OO perl and what the hell is so cool about cramming a bunch of functions in one line (to the point it looks like you opened a binary file in vim) but I imagine eventually I'll get there. I think my experience isn't uncommon with perl people and was wondering what path others took. Scott Kahler On 10/4/07 10:52 PM, "djgoku" wrote: > Learning Perl 4th Edition > Authors: Randal L. Schwartz, Tome Phoenix & brian d foy > ISBN: 0-596-10105-8 > http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/ > > Review by Jonathan C. Otsuka > Kansas City Perl Mongers > http://kc.pm.org > 2007-10-04 > -- Scott Kahler Systems Engineer uclick, LLC (an Andrews McMeel Universal Company) scottk at uclick.com www.uclick.com www.gocomics.com From sterling at hanenkamp.com Fri Oct 5 13:39:29 2007 From: sterling at hanenkamp.com (Andrew Sterling Hanenkamp) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 15:39:29 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Where did your perl come from? In-Reply-To: References: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <379101a80710051339h4493589eke14bf62a2c9b5c38@mail.gmail.com> Back when I was a wee lad (in college), I had a part time job working as a network consultant. I was introduced to Perl when I started working with some software we decided to use to produce one of the very early spam-filtering whatsits. I thought it was okay, but I didn't really get it. I'd primarily had experience with Pascal, C, C++, and Java up to that point. I also started using PHP (3.x) to built a web site for the company around the same time and liked it some. Then, I graduated right after 9-11, so I decided that rather than braving the already tanking job market (and since I couldn't figure out what else to do), I decided being paid to get a MS in Computer Science was a good idea (and I still think it was). Anyway, about a semester in I was trying to figure out what language I liked. Java was starting to drive me batty. PHP's utter lack of proper OO and namespaces repulsed me. I gave Python a whirl and decided that having only one right way to do things was almost as bad as Java, so I tried Perl again and learned a bit more about it. After reading a few things about it and reading Larry Wall's latest couple Apocalypse's and was sold on what Perl would become (not that I don't like most of what Perl is, but Perl 6 rocks my socks). I read Learning Perl and the entirety of Programming Perl to get started. I've since looked through Programming Perl again to refresh myself, and Perl Best Practices (and threw out 70% ;). Most of what I learn now I learn by finding modules I like on CPAN and reading the code to see how they work (so much for Perl being a write-only language). Cheers, Andrew On 10/5/07, Scott Kahler wrote: > > This brought to mind a question that comes up every once in awhile. How > did > you go about learning perl? > > My experience was that I read the first half of Elements of Programming > with > Perl and then jumped it. I happened to be in a heavily perl shop and and > had a VB6 background. Aside from the basics I got from that book most my > learning came from digging through code, flipping back and forth through > Perl Cookbook and creating the occasional disaster and asking the "real" > hackers questions. If I recall my point of enlightenment in order were > > 1) variable without types, sweet! > 2) damn hashes are cool > 3) wow, there is a lot of stuff on CPAN > 4) wow, there is a lot of crap on CPAN > 5) DBI is good > 6) mod_perl > 7) template toolkit = love > 8) creating module packages is damn handy > > I'm still working enlightenment via map, the greatness of OO perl and what > the hell is so cool about cramming a bunch of functions in one line (to > the > point it looks like you opened a binary file in vim) but I imagine > eventually I'll get there. > > I think my experience isn't uncommon with perl people and was wondering > what > path others took. > > Scott Kahler > > > On 10/4/07 10:52 PM, "djgoku" wrote: > > > Learning Perl 4th Edition > > Authors: Randal L. Schwartz, Tome Phoenix & brian d foy > > ISBN: 0-596-10105-8 > > http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/ > > > > Review by Jonathan C. Otsuka > > Kansas City Perl Mongers > > http://kc.pm.org > > 2007-10-04 > > > > > > -- > Scott Kahler > Systems Engineer > uclick, LLC (an Andrews McMeel Universal Company) > scottk at uclick.com > www.uclick.com www.gocomics.com > > > _______________________________________________ > kc mailing list > kc at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/kc/attachments/20071005/281a7735/attachment.html From frank at wiles.org Sat Oct 6 08:36:26 2007 From: frank at wiles.org (Frank Wiles) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 10:36:26 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Where did your perl come from? In-Reply-To: References: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071006103626.14d27ff0.frank@wiles.org> On Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:26:03 -0500 Scott Kahler wrote: > This brought to mind a question that comes up every once in awhile. > How did you go about learning perl? My Perl journey started in 1997. Back then there weren't a ton of learning options other than Programming Perl and perldoc, so that's what I used. At that point I had some experience with Logo, Basic, Pascal, C/C++, and a strange little language called Lite. Lite was bundled with a free ( but not strictly Open Source ) database called mSQL ( not the lack of a 'y' ). I was using Lite/mSQL to build small web applications for my employer, but was really just a sysadmin who wrote a bit of code. I was then introduced to a great programmer who did everything in Perl. After he showed me a few things about Perl I was hooked and really haven't looked back. I then found CPAN and the rest is history... Yes I do occasionally check out other languages to make sure I'm not flying down this road blind/ignorant, but so far no one has showed me a compelling reason to switch to something else as my primary language. ------------------------------------------------------- Frank Wiles, Revolution Systems, LLC. Personal : frank at wiles.org http://www.wiles.org Work : frank at revsys.com http://www.revsys.com From emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 09:01:23 2007 From: emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com (Emmanuel Mejias) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:01:23 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Where did your perl come from? In-Reply-To: <20071006103626.14d27ff0.frank@wiles.org> References: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> <20071006103626.14d27ff0.frank@wiles.org> Message-ID: <38feac7e0710060901o72fdcd24v5d356f2dd0fad004@mail.gmail.com> wow! i need to get with you guys and start picking your brains! i like the functionality of perl and all the cool stuff you can do with it, but it looks like i'm just barely scratching the surface learning it! i'm a sysadmin and although, most seem to either script in bash or korn, i thought i'd get crazy and learn some perl. On 10/6/07, Frank Wiles wrote: > > On Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:26:03 -0500 > Scott Kahler wrote: > > > This brought to mind a question that comes up every once in awhile. > > How did you go about learning perl? > > My Perl journey started in 1997. Back then there weren't a ton > of learning options other than Programming Perl and perldoc, > so that's what I used. > > At that point I had some experience with Logo, Basic, Pascal, > C/C++, and a strange little language called Lite. Lite was > bundled with a free ( but not strictly Open Source ) database > called mSQL ( not the lack of a 'y' ). I was using Lite/mSQL > to build small web applications for my employer, but was > really just a sysadmin who wrote a bit of code. I was then > introduced to a great programmer who did everything in Perl. > > After he showed me a few things about Perl I was hooked and > really haven't looked back. I then found CPAN and the rest is > history... > > Yes I do occasionally check out other languages to make sure I'm not > flying down this road blind/ignorant, but so far no one has showed me > a compelling reason to switch to something else as my primary > language. > > ------------------------------------------------------- > Frank Wiles, Revolution Systems, LLC. > Personal : frank at wiles.org http://www.wiles.org > Work : frank at revsys.com http://www.revsys.com > > _______________________________________________ > kc mailing list > kc at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/kc/attachments/20071006/91bd95d6/attachment.html From frank at wiles.org Sat Oct 6 09:12:51 2007 From: frank at wiles.org (Frank Wiles) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:12:51 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Where did your perl come from? In-Reply-To: <38feac7e0710060901o72fdcd24v5d356f2dd0fad004@mail.gmail.com> References: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> <20071006103626.14d27ff0.frank@wiles.org> <38feac7e0710060901o72fdcd24v5d356f2dd0fad004@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071006111251.58f7558e.frank@wiles.org> On Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:01:23 -0500 "Emmanuel Mejias" wrote: > wow! i need to get with you guys and start picking your brains! i > like the functionality of perl and all the cool stuff you can do with > it, but it looks like i'm just barely scratching the surface learning > it! i'm a sysadmin and although, most seem to either script in bash > or korn, i thought i'd get crazy and learn some perl. Personally I think the days of wanting to or needing to do bash/korn/etc shell scripting are over. Many people disagree with me on this... But I look at it as a standardization. If bash/korn can't easily do everything you want to do, then you should be using perl/python/etc. and use it everywhere. Obviously, I don't mean go and rewrite all of your distro's default init scripts. But if you needed to write your own or heavily modify an existing one, just convert it to Perl. Then your sysadmins only *really* have to understand Perl and be able to read a bit of shell. Not to mention I see it as a huge waste of your valuable time to dig into a shell scripting language you know is of limited use, simply because "that's how it's always been done". :) If nothing else, the availability of CPAN modules should put to rest any arguments of the merits of Perl as a "scripting" language. ------------------------------------------------------- Frank Wiles, Revolution Systems, LLC. Personal : frank at wiles.org http://www.wiles.org Work : frank at revsys.com http://www.revsys.com From scratchcomputing at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 10:04:24 2007 From: scratchcomputing at gmail.com (Eric Wilhelm) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 10:04:24 -0700 Subject: [Kc] Where did your perl come from? In-Reply-To: <20071006111251.58f7558e.frank@wiles.org> References: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> <38feac7e0710060901o72fdcd24v5d356f2dd0fad004@mail.gmail.com> <20071006111251.58f7558e.frank@wiles.org> Message-ID: <200710061004.24717.ewilhelm@cpan.org> # from Frank Wiles # on Saturday 06 October 2007 09:12: >? Obviously, I don't mean go and rewrite all of your distro's >? default init scripts. Darn! I've been wanting to do that for a few years now ;-) --Eric -- "It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand." --Mark Twain --------------------------------------------------- http://scratchcomputing.com --------------------------------------------------- From scratchcomputing at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 10:11:34 2007 From: scratchcomputing at gmail.com (Eric Wilhelm) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 10:11:34 -0700 Subject: [Kc] Where did your perl come from? In-Reply-To: <20071006103626.14d27ff0.frank@wiles.org> References: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> <20071006103626.14d27ff0.frank@wiles.org> Message-ID: <200710061011.34974.ewilhelm@cpan.org> # from Frank Wiles # on Saturday 06 October 2007 08:36: >My Perl journey started in 1997. ?Back then there weren't a ton >? of learning options other than Programming Perl and perldoc, >? so that's what I used. There were more options in 2002, but Programming Perl seemed the most definitive of the choices at the bookstore, so that's what I used. And perldoc, which /could/ be better organized in some places, but always rewards the careful reader. I've looked at Learning Perl and others since then, but I'm easily dissappointed with the lack of completeness, correctness, and humor. --Eric -- Peer's Law: The solution to the problem changes the problem. --------------------------------------------------- http://scratchcomputing.com --------------------------------------------------- From emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 11:04:28 2007 From: emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com (Emmanuel Mejias) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 13:04:28 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Where did your perl come from? In-Reply-To: <200710061011.34974.ewilhelm@cpan.org> References: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> <20071006103626.14d27ff0.frank@wiles.org> <200710061011.34974.ewilhelm@cpan.org> Message-ID: <38feac7e0710061104v6516d904j91a968f0eeee133b@mail.gmail.com> On 10/6/07, Eric Wilhelm wrote: > > # from Frank Wiles > # on Saturday 06 October 2007 08:36: > > >My Perl journey started in 1997. Back then there weren't a ton > > of learning options other than Programming Perl and perldoc, > > so that's what I used. > > There were more options in 2002, but Programming Perl seemed the most > definitive of the choices at the bookstore, so that's what I used. And > perldoc, which /could/ be better organized in some places, but always > rewards the careful reader. > > I've looked at Learning Perl and others since then, but I'm easily > dissappointed with the lack of completeness, correctness, and humor. > > --Eric > -- > Peer's Law: The solution to the problem changes the problem. > --------------------------------------------------- > http://scratchcomputing.com > --------------------------------------------------- > _______________________________________________ > kc mailing list > kc at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc > What about Perl by Example (Ellie Quigley) or Beginning Perl (James Lee) Apress??? I've noticed that those give a bit more detail and seem to explain things a bit more thoroughly. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/kc/attachments/20071006/be1d17b7/attachment-0001.html From davidnicol at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 15:09:03 2007 From: davidnicol at gmail.com (David Nicol) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 17:09:03 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Where did your perl come from? In-Reply-To: <38feac7e0710061104v6516d904j91a968f0eeee133b@mail.gmail.com> References: <99dd19c90710042052s591fce60r59bbd10c63cda2fa@mail.gmail.com> <20071006103626.14d27ff0.frank@wiles.org> <200710061011.34974.ewilhelm@cpan.org> <38feac7e0710061104v6516d904j91a968f0eeee133b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <934f64a20710061509t6002c77fy2811ae8ca0b1c83@mail.gmail.com> 1996; UMKC information services. I was handed a pink camel and told to maintain a script that had been written by Gerald Combs or Eric Shimamoto or both. Then I read the blue camel while writing the tipjar server vs. 1 and 2. -- Where the scenery's attractive and the air is radioactive yes the wild west is where I want to be -- Tom Lehrer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQi7PaYKqTU From amoore at mooresystems.com Tue Oct 9 07:18:49 2007 From: amoore at mooresystems.com (Andrew Moore) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 09:18:49 -0500 Subject: [Kc] meeting tonight? Message-ID: <20071009141849.GA25425@mooresystems.com> I'm not going to be able to make it to a meeting tonight, but do any of you have interest in getting together? It sounds like we've had some discussion about how we've started learning perl and about improving a few pieces of code that people have posted on the list. Perhaps those or Jonathan book review of Learning Perl would be good jumping off points. -Andy From djgoku at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 08:40:29 2007 From: djgoku at gmail.com (djgoku) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 10:40:29 -0500 Subject: [Kc] meeting tonight? In-Reply-To: <20071009141849.GA25425@mooresystems.com> References: <20071009141849.GA25425@mooresystems.com> Message-ID: <99dd19c90710090840s18ca3b9era431abd0f1b4f303@mail.gmail.com> On 10/9/07, Andrew Moore wrote: > > I'm not going to be able to make it to a meeting tonight, but do any > of you have interest in getting together? > > It sounds like we've had some discussion about how we've started > learning perl and about improving a few pieces of code that people > have posted on the list. Perhaps those or Jonathan book review of > Learning Perl would be good jumping off points. My class isn't out until 7PMish. But I am < 5 minutes away so if others decide to show I will sure join them. From emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 09:11:29 2007 From: emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com (Emmanuel Mejias) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 11:11:29 -0500 Subject: [Kc] meeting tonight? In-Reply-To: <99dd19c90710090840s18ca3b9era431abd0f1b4f303@mail.gmail.com> References: <20071009141849.GA25425@mooresystems.com> <99dd19c90710090840s18ca3b9era431abd0f1b4f303@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <38feac7e0710090911x427306ddn7d290fdf5a7839eb@mail.gmail.com> On 10/9/07, djgoku wrote: > > On 10/9/07, Andrew Moore wrote: > > > > I'm not going to be able to make it to a meeting tonight, but do any > > of you have interest in getting together? > > > > It sounds like we've had some discussion about how we've started > > learning perl and about improving a few pieces of code that people > > have posted on the list. Perhaps those or Jonathan book review of > > Learning Perl would be good jumping off points. > > My class isn't out until 7PMish. But I am < 5 minutes away so if > others decide to show I will sure join them. > _______________________________________________ > kc mailing list > kc at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc > where is the meeting at again? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/kc/attachments/20071009/894a3c7d/attachment.html From davidnicol at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 09:20:32 2007 From: davidnicol at gmail.com (David Nicol) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 11:20:32 -0500 Subject: [Kc] meeting tonight? (anyone for playing start-up company?) Message-ID: <934f64a20710090920u6c9d3b86jbbd29277b1fd8037@mail.gmail.com> Having resigned from my day job last week, I'm now working FT on developing tipjar.com. I need collaborators who are okay with laboring a little for altruism or for debt which won't get paid until there are investors or profits (or both.) I could present tipjar LLC's various business units, and how you can fit in. From djgoku at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 09:27:56 2007 From: djgoku at gmail.com (djgoku) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 11:27:56 -0500 Subject: [Kc] meeting tonight? In-Reply-To: <38feac7e0710090911x427306ddn7d290fdf5a7839eb@mail.gmail.com> References: <20071009141849.GA25425@mooresystems.com> <99dd19c90710090840s18ca3b9era431abd0f1b4f303@mail.gmail.com> <38feac7e0710090911x427306ddn7d290fdf5a7839eb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <99dd19c90710090927x7197a74ap7cf45d14d5828a4@mail.gmail.com> On 10/9/07, Emmanuel Mejias wrote: > > where is the meeting at again? http://tinyurl.com/3ah9bw From davidnicol at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 12:51:03 2007 From: davidnicol at gmail.com (David Nicol) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 14:51:03 -0500 Subject: [Kc] meeting tonight? In-Reply-To: <99dd19c90710090927x7197a74ap7cf45d14d5828a4@mail.gmail.com> References: <20071009141849.GA25425@mooresystems.com> <99dd19c90710090840s18ca3b9era431abd0f1b4f303@mail.gmail.com> <38feac7e0710090911x427306ddn7d290fdf5a7839eb@mail.gmail.com> <99dd19c90710090927x7197a74ap7cf45d14d5828a4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <934f64a20710091251v58656324l5ec17fcc86dbf618@mail.gmail.com> although on http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=utf-8&q=planet+sub&near=Kansas+City,+MO&fb=1&reviews=1&cid=39037844,-94587183,17778597573828129203&li=lmd&om=1&ll=39.037153,-94.58721&spn=0.001971,0.003648&t=h&z=18&layer=t you can see that the pin for planet sub's address is about a half-block to the north of it. Of course from the street you can see the sign. On 10/9/07, djgoku wrote: > On 10/9/07, Emmanuel Mejias wrote: > > > > where is the meeting at again? > > http://tinyurl.com/3ah9bw > ___________________________ From stephenclouse at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 14:56:46 2007 From: stephenclouse at gmail.com (Stephen Clouse) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 16:56:46 -0500 Subject: [Kc] meeting tonight? In-Reply-To: <99dd19c90710090840s18ca3b9era431abd0f1b4f303@mail.gmail.com> References: <20071009141849.GA25425@mooresystems.com> <99dd19c90710090840s18ca3b9era431abd0f1b4f303@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <5d0ee2170710091456h37ac6f9dgcf3f72e5d3e7c23e@mail.gmail.com> Since it sounds like there's some interest this month, I'll make the trip down there. Someone else better be there :) -- Stephen Clouse -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/kc/attachments/20071009/2645e0a9/attachment.html From davidnicol at gmail.com Wed Oct 10 14:40:19 2007 From: davidnicol at gmail.com (David Nicol) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:40:19 -0500 Subject: [Kc] last night's meeting a success Message-ID: <934f64a20710101440v7ecf609co45abc2bd2b41fd41@mail.gmail.com> Stephen, DJ and myself were there I talked about my fbfund grant application DJ talked about his program to identify deletable backups Stephen proposed a possible incremental improvement to computer-generated directions software From emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com Thu Oct 11 11:44:14 2007 From: emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com (Emmanuel Mejias) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:44:14 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Need second look at this... Message-ID: <38feac7e0710111144r66570871p32a65596a80f5db2@mail.gmail.com> trying to grep out some info from my /etc/hosts file...just to get more practice with Perl and well for my personal pleasure, too. #!/usr/bin/perl open (FILE, "/etc/hosts"); @lines = ; close (FILE); foreach $line (@lines){ if ($line =~ /pm1/){ print $line; } } the problem with this is that it's printing out some hosts that i don't want that also have pm1 at the end. somehostpm1 but it also gets my dr hosts (dr-somehostpm1) thoughts? by the way, i had to jump the wifes car so i ended up missing out on the meeting. gonna try to make the next one for sure, though. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/kc/attachments/20071011/72b64e75/attachment.html From emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com Thu Oct 11 13:53:34 2007 From: emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com (Emmanuel Mejias) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:53:34 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Need second look at this... In-Reply-To: References: <38feac7e0710111144r66570871p32a65596a80f5db2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <38feac7e0710111353h510be999w58fae36d3f2f0107@mail.gmail.com> my "dr" hosts are my disaster/recovery hosts that i don't use on a daily basis...the other ones are production hosts that i'm using on a daily basis. On 10/11/07, Garrett Goebel wrote: > > In order to fix your regex you'll need to tell us the difference > between somehostpm1 and dr-somehostpm1. > > Will a "good" somehostpm1 never be preceeded by 'dr-'? If so... > > # Shot at adhering to Perl Best Practices > open my($file), '<', '/etc/hosts'; > while (my $line = <$file>) { > if ($line =~ /(? print $line; > } > } > > # Quick'n Dirty > open FILE, ' map { print if /(?; > > I haven't tested it... perhaps it'll work. > > (? it'll match anything that isn't preceeded by the pattern without > including it in the match. > > Garrett > > On Oct 11, 2007, at 2:44 PM, Emmanuel Mejias wrote: > > > trying to grep out some info from my /etc/hosts file...just to get > > more practice with Perl and well for my personal pleasure, too. > > > > #!/usr/bin/perl > > > > open (FILE, "/etc/hosts"); > > @lines = ; > > close (FILE); > > > > foreach $line (@lines){ > > if ($line =~ /pm1/){ > > print $line; > > } > > } > > > > the problem with this is that it's printing out some hosts that i > > don't want that also have pm1 at the end. > > > > somehostpm1 but it also gets my dr hosts (dr-somehostpm1) > > > > thoughts? > > > > by the way, i had to jump the wifes car so i ended up missing out > > on the meeting. gonna try to make the next one for sure, though. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > kc mailing list > > kc at pm.org > > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/kc/attachments/20071011/0779bd8e/attachment.html From djgoku at gmail.com Thu Oct 11 13:54:58 2007 From: djgoku at gmail.com (djgoku) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:54:58 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Need second look at this... In-Reply-To: <38feac7e0710111144r66570871p32a65596a80f5db2@mail.gmail.com> References: <38feac7e0710111144r66570871p32a65596a80f5db2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <99dd19c90710111354m51f304c9q76f7b8ed95590f87@mail.gmail.com> On 10/11/07, Emmanuel Mejias wrote: > trying to grep out some info from my /etc/hosts file...just to get more > practice with Perl and well for my personal pleasure, too. > > #!/usr/bin/perl > > open (FILE, "/etc/hosts"); > @lines = ; > close (FILE); > > foreach $line (@lines){ > if ($line =~ /pm1/){ > print $line; > } > } > > > the problem with this is that it's printing out some hosts that i don't want > that also have pm1 at the end. > > somehostpm1 but it also gets my dr hosts (dr-somehostpm1) > > thoughts? Are the ones you don't want all have a prefix of 'dr-'? Can we get a sample list? > by the way, i had to jump the wifes car so i ended up missing out on the > meeting. gonna try to make the next one for sure, though. From ggoebel at goebel.ws Thu Oct 11 13:40:17 2007 From: ggoebel at goebel.ws (Garrett Goebel) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:40:17 -0400 Subject: [Kc] Need second look at this... In-Reply-To: <38feac7e0710111144r66570871p32a65596a80f5db2@mail.gmail.com> References: <38feac7e0710111144r66570871p32a65596a80f5db2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: In order to fix your regex you'll need to tell us the difference between somehostpm1 and dr-somehostpm1. Will a "good" somehostpm1 never be preceeded by 'dr-'? If so... # Shot at adhering to Perl Best Practices open my($file), '<', '/etc/hosts'; while (my $line = <$file>) { if ($line =~ /(?; I haven't tested it... perhaps it'll work. (? trying to grep out some info from my /etc/hosts file...just to get > more practice with Perl and well for my personal pleasure, too. > > #!/usr/bin/perl > > open (FILE, "/etc/hosts"); > @lines = ; > close (FILE); > > foreach $line (@lines){ > if ($line =~ /pm1/){ > print $line; > } > } > > the problem with this is that it's printing out some hosts that i > don't want that also have pm1 at the end. > > somehostpm1 but it also gets my dr hosts (dr-somehostpm1) > > thoughts? > > by the way, i had to jump the wifes car so i ended up missing out > on the meeting. gonna try to make the next one for sure, though. > > _______________________________________________ > kc mailing list > kc at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc From emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com Thu Oct 11 13:58:25 2007 From: emmanuel.mejias at gmail.com (Emmanuel Mejias) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:58:25 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Need second look at this... In-Reply-To: <99dd19c90710111354m51f304c9q76f7b8ed95590f87@mail.gmail.com> References: <38feac7e0710111144r66570871p32a65596a80f5db2@mail.gmail.com> <99dd19c90710111354m51f304c9q76f7b8ed95590f87@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <38feac7e0710111358r7afd8e67n8c2836f54501ede1@mail.gmail.com> On 10/11/07, djgoku wrote: > > On 10/11/07, Emmanuel Mejias wrote: > > trying to grep out some info from my /etc/hosts file...just to get more > > practice with Perl and well for my personal pleasure, too. > > > > #!/usr/bin/perl > > > > open (FILE, "/etc/hosts"); > > @lines = ; > > close (FILE); > > > > foreach $line (@lines){ > > if ($line =~ /pm1/){ > > print $line; > > } > > } > > > > > > the problem with this is that it's printing out some hosts that i don't > want > > that also have pm1 at the end. > > > > somehostpm1 but it also gets my dr hosts (dr-somehostpm1) > > > > thoughts? > > Are the ones you don't want all have a prefix of 'dr-'? Can we get a > sample list? correct! cnxxpm1 cnxypm1 cnxzpm1 dr-cnxxpm1 dr-cnxypm1 dr-cnxzpm1 dr-cnabpm1 dr-cncdpm1 > by the way, i had to jump the wifes car so i ended up missing out on the > > meeting. gonna try to make the next one for sure, though. > _______________________________________________ > kc mailing list > kc at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/kc/attachments/20071011/3241bcdf/attachment.html From davidnicol at gmail.com Fri Oct 12 11:12:56 2007 From: davidnicol at gmail.com (David Nicol) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:12:56 -0500 Subject: [Kc] book review of "Beuitiful Code: ..." Message-ID: <934f64a20710121112p78f0f600lcac125c8956aa634@mail.gmail.com> slashdot has rejected my work. Oh well, here it is. **************************** Beautiful Code is a collection of thirty-three essays by notable computer programmers, all dared by editors Greg Wilson and Andy Oram to hold forth about a piece of source code they have found notably beautiful, apparently with intention of producing what may become a standard computer science textbook. Such an experiment has not been carried out before.

Were Don Knuth dead, this book would probably be dedicated to his memory. Beautiful Code collects "cultural wisdom" of computer programmers. If one were to consider The Art of Computer Programming to be something of a Pentateuch, Beautiful Code could the accompanying Midrash. Having obtained an e-copy from O'Reilly and processed it with pdf2txt and then run grep -ci knuth Chapter*.txt, I found that not everyone mentioned Knuth. Those who did have a K number greater than zero by their name in the synopses below. (Asterisks before the author's name represent other chapters mentioning the author.)

Speaking of experiments, O'reilly is trying to develop an online community based on the book, with a wiki.

I had several programming projects prioritized ahead of writing this book review, but after leafing through the six hundred pages and reading a few of the pieces in it at random I realized that my professional work would benefit from making reading it cover to cover my primary free-time action item.

To be systematic and thorough, here are quick summaries of the essays, which are more prolix than the editor's version of the same exercise in the preface. Proceeding in this fashion is really horrible book review practice, but there really isn't any cleaner way to approach this particular text.

*** Brian Kernighan (K0) discusses Rob Pike's minimal regular expression engine optimized for pedagogy.

Karl Fogel (K0) tells the origin story of Subversion's "delta editor" internal interface, including an abandoned branch. He introduces a human-factors aspect to software beauty: by having a strongly defined interface, development time which might be squandered on debating interface points can be put to more productive use.

** Jon Bentley (K4), the author of Programming Pearls, holds forth about quicksort, instrumenting quicksort, and generating mathematical forumlae which give the same results. His essay nicely demonstrates the tension between procedural (pseudocode) and descriptive (mathematics) language.

Tim Bray (K0), writing in a tone suitable for a more general audience, uses Ruby's regexps to analyze his Apache server logs from his blog, which he encourages the reader to check out, to build a case for his suspicion that Google uses binary search.

* Elliotte Rusty Harold (K1) draws on experience writing XML verifiers to reinforce the truism that early passes at a problem should focus on correctness, saving speed for later.

Michael Feathers (K0) explains his appreciation for Ward Cunningham's FIT Java testing framework's noncompliance against Java coders' rules of thumb, revealing a tension between closed (final classes, designed-in hooks and extension points) and open (working stub base classes) approaches to designing for extensibility. FIT-derived systems take HTML system documentation with tests embedded in it in tables as input and fill in one table cell with a pass/fail result. By carefully selecting what to hold constant and deferring extensibility to authors of derived classes, FIT allows Java developers, jaded and wounded by corporate infighting, to appreciate the fundamental elegance of a solid, basic, O-O approach.

* Alberto Savoia (K1) plays fast and loose with math jargon. He discusses JUnit as an introduction to an exploration of how to test a binary search function for correctness. He performs a math proof -- claiming that a conclusion follows from implications of known-true axioms -- without calling it that, and a few pages later uses the word "induction" in the non-mathematical sense. He gives us a quick course in software testing best practices, including smoke testing, boundary testing, and what he calls "test theories" which are statements made about what the tested system is supposed to do, and some techniques for deriving additional test theories off the "happy path." Apparently 2006 was the year that data sets reached the size where the (a+b)/2 method of finding the midpoint between a and b started overflowing using signed 32-bit integers, which wreaked all kinds of weird havoc.

Charles Petzold (K0) uses and endorses dynamic code generation for efficient image processing, reminiscing about the feats of the team who wrote Windows 1.0 in 8086 assembly language and applying similar techniques in his C# code thanks to the System.Reflection.Emit namespace. The results aren't easy on the eyes, but they run in a quarter of the time of equivalent code that makes decisions inside loops. It is not clear if the MSIL compiler is going to be so brazen as to perform loop unrolling on bytecodes emanating from ILGenerator objects; if not, I expect that the optimal acceleration of the dynamic method would occur with the loops unrolled into a modified Duff's device large enough to use almost all of the CPU cache. That would remove many loop bounds comparisons, which aren't that many instructions compared with the operation being performed on each pixel, but which may necessitate CPU pipeline stalls. To save another two percent of the time, and possibly hurt general system performance during the operation. Small processes take less effort to switch between. So never mind. Unless you want to benchmark it for something to do.

Douglas Crockford (K1), who explains why LISP has never been accepted by the mainstream, and why the LISP community doesn't care, proposes to use a technique from a 1973 paper (anticipating object orientation, no less) by Vaughn Pratt ("Top Down Operator Precedence") that modified a technique published by Robert W. Floyd (for whom Knuth wrote a glowing eulogy) to write a parser that can process a subset of ECMA-262 (a.k.a. Javascript) entirely within that subset, which includes functions, objects, and JSON literals. It's all about the left binding power. And the "nud" and the "led," terms which when given to a search engine yield a slightly easier-going version of chapter nine. Null denotation and left denotation. Truthy and falsy. Don't repeat yourself, write a macro. A parser yields a parse tree, and hands that off to something else. A proposal for accommodating the needs of both language designers who want to reserve a lot of symbols and programmers who don't want to have to synonymize around them. Would extending Pratt's technique to support languages where not everything is a functional expression really be as easy as Crockford makes it look? Later in the book, R. Kent Dybvig (K0) explains how Scheme's syntax-case macro expander lets the programmer forget the whole deal about using quasi-reserved names in macros, because it abstracts them out for you, while offering an extra-special syntax for when you really truly do want to interfere with the internal operation of a macro. I am very pleased that O'Reilly sent me this book to review while I have been working on a macro system for Perl, and having read the Dybvig and Crockford articles, Macrame.pm will be better that it would have been had I not read these articles, when it finally does get completed.

Henry S. Warren, Jr. (K1) rants about a fundamental problem, the best way to count set bits. Stunningly, divide-and-conquer approaches using bit shifting beat optimized brute force approaches, although calling them opaque is an understatement. Population count processing is applicable to a wide variety of basic data processing infrastructure problems. Warren's elucidation of the situation is a perfect example of the best practice development process: correct and fast, in that order.

A USABILITY GURU: Ashish Gulhati (K0), who prefers to work remotely from the Himalayas, talks about how helping some social idealists inspired Cryptonite, his end-user-friendly encrypted webmail system, then launches into the history of the project, including architecture implementation details and discussion of security concerns and benchmarking, and how using well defined interfaces made replacing one component with a more efficient one with comparable functionality a relative breeze. Along with Lincoln Steins's chapter, this chapter is a nice introduction to object oriented Perl and how the reusability aspect of a good interface design effectively optimizes programmer time in any language.

BIOINFORMATICIANS: Lincoln Stein (K0), without encumbering his narrative with O-O terminology, presents his Bio::Graphics system for displaying genetics research results as a example of usabilty done right, this time usability by one's fellow programmers. The advantage of using standard interfaces becomes apparent when it became possible to support many graphics formats by drop-in replacement of the GD library, which outputs in only one format, with a different library with the same interface but configurability to output in other formats too. The tension between perfection and deliverability is discussed, as Stein reveals his big wishlist item for his library but opines that the level of rewriting required is expected to prevent its reprioritization, especially as there is an effective workaround. Immediately following that, Jim Kent (K0) tells us how readability and understandability lead to extensibility in the Gene Sorter, including a short tutorial on writing polymorphic objects in C.

MATH GEEKS: Adam Kolawa (K0) uses and endorses the CERN math library, which evolved into LAPACK. The well-commented core routines, in Fortran with bindings for use by other languages, are in regular use after three decades. Jack Dongarra and Piotr Luszczek (K0) discuss recent modifications made to LAPACK to take full advantage of modern hardware.

KERNEL HACKERS:Greg Kroah-Hartman (K0) appreciates the discipline involved in maintaining the Linux kernel, where the acrobats operate in full view of the world without the benefit of nets such as dynamic type checking; Diomidis Spinellis (K0) uses the BSD virtual file system as the springboard for presenting general truths about indirection and maintainability; and Bryan Cantrill (K0) likens software bugs to sewage, in particular an embarrassingly unforseen race condition in a released version of Solaris.

PYTHON MONGERS:* Andrew Kuchling (K0) discusses Python's hash tables, Travis E. Oliphant (K0) discusses the optimized n-dimensional iterator that lets the NumPy python math library do matrix operations without blowing its cache, and Rogerio Atem de Carvalho and Rafael Monnerat (K0) hype the flexibility of ERP5, an enterprise resource planning system that runs on python/zope.

ROBERT HEINLEIN FANS: Ronald Mak (K0) uses J2EE beans to communicate both with Mars rovers and their legions of fans who want to download terabytes.

PUTTING THE GOO IN GOOGLE: Jeffrey Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat (K0) discuss MapReduce. If you don't already know what MapReduce is, you probably know what to do to find out.

THE NETWORK IS THE COMPUTER: Simon Peyton Jones (K0) introduces STM (Software Transactional Memory) which is an allegedly fool-proof replacement for locking discipline in multithreaded Haskell, and then discusses his solution to Trono's "Santa Claus problem" without explaining why the problem is supposed to be difficult.

William R. Otte and Douglas C. Schmidt (K0) manage to abstract concurrency models out of their framework for networked services.

Andrew Patzer (K0) reveals some practical best practices as he tells the story of doing a straightfoward piece of systems integration using RESTful web services.

RADICAL USABILITY Andreas Zeller (K0), apparently a devotee of the Einsteinian craft-a-tool-to-straighten-the-bent-paperclip-from-the-good-paperclip-you-have-found methodology, uses an automated divide-and-conquer approach to discovering which of several thousand patches in the delta between two versions of gdb was responsible for a mysterious loss of function in the ddd graphical front end. Had ddd a debugging mode that logged the full interaction between itself and gdb, the world might not be the better for his automated technique.

* Yukihiro Matsumoto (K0), the author of Ruby, might be annoyed that his essay on the nature of elegance, including the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle and other similarly useful tips, was not selected as a forward instead of buried towards the end of the collection.

COMPUTER ACCESS FOR ALL: * T. V. Raman (K0) shares his amazement at how straightforwardly the extensible design of emacs Lisp, with its advice system that allows insertion of function before, after, or fully replacing any of the existing emacs functions, allowed his system to adapt emacs for eyes-free use to bush out over the extended development of emacspeak as a hobby project. Takeaways include the advice that when adapting a communication for another medium, it is important to communicate the message, not the artifacts of the previous medium. He is justifiably proud of his eyes-free calendar widget, among others. Bizarrely, there is no mention of Morse Code in Arun Mehta(K0)'s retrospective on a project to develop an improved system for the use of Stephen Hawking, who could only use one button (but he could control how long he pressed it, and could watch a screen as he did so.)

BEAUTIFUL CAN MEAN EASY ON THE EYES: Laura Wingerd and Christopher Seiwald (K0), from perforce, discuss readable layout, including selection of line break points, and reveal the strong correlation between bugs and nested ifs. (Takeaway: prefer case statements, even if it means repeating yourself)

CASTLES MADE OF SAND Brian Hayes (K0) demonstrates the truth to the saying "while in other disciplines the researchers stand on the shoulders of giants, in computer science we stand on each other's shoes" as he flails around in search of, and eventually finds, the easy way to find co-linearity of three points in order to analyze satellite photos of the lower Mississippi river, which tends to change course during high water.

IN CONCLUSION

I think if I had been asked to write a chapter for this book, I would talk about normalized Huffman tables, as discussed in Managing Gigabytes, which Hans Reiser recommended in response to my relating to him a conversation about ReiserFS had by the Kansas City LUG. Beautiful code has a lot of different things happening in it, with snippets of source code in various languages,\and nice diagrams where appropriate. It was not a fast read, although some of the pieces do flow nicely, due to the necessity of retooling one's entire brain from one essay to the next.

Were I still a single nerd, and my girlfriend were to present me with Beautiful Code, perhaps as a birthday present, I would not hesitate to select her as my personal and permanent nerdess, all other things being equal.

David Nicol, inventor of the online tip jar and always looking for collaborators with spare tuits, can be contacted through the comment form at tipjar.com. -- non-smoker since 11:31 pm october 10, 2007 "To do good in secret, and shun the world's applause, is the surest testimony of a virtuous heart and self-approving conscience." -- John Polidori ( http://tinyurl.com/ytm8ba ) From davidnicol at gmail.com Sun Oct 21 14:45:02 2007 From: davidnicol at gmail.com (David Nicol) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:45:02 -0500 Subject: [Kc] o'reilly user greoup newsletter now in low-bandwidth URL form Message-ID: <934f64a20710211445x4ace99cfv2bac8935c0147d36@mail.gmail.com> http://www.oreilly.com/emails/ug-oct.html request book review copies through me. -- non-smoker since 11:31 pm october 10, 2007 "To do good in secret, and shun the world's applause, is the surest testimony of a virtuous heart and self-approving conscience." -- John Polidori ( http://tinyurl.com/ytm8ba ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/kc/attachments/20071021/1a1ad9eb/attachment.html From amoore at mooresystems.com Thu Oct 25 13:55:20 2007 From: amoore at mooresystems.com (Andrew Moore) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:55:20 -0500 Subject: [Kc] Looking for Python Instructor for Workshop in KC Message-ID: <20071025205520.GA940@mooresystems.com> Hi Perl gang - I'm passing this along since I don't know of a cohesive python users group in town, and I know that there are at least a couple of Pythoners on the list. I received a request from Eric Foster with MoDOT who is helping with a symposium here in KC and is looking for a python instructor. I've attached it below. If you can help him out, please contact Mr. Foster directly. Thanks, -Andy On Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 01:31:07PM -0500, Eric.Foster at modot.mo.gov wrote: > I am involved with MAGIC http://www.magicgis.org/ an organization to > encourage GIS development, sharing, cooperation, etc. and educate > practitioners in GIS. We hold a symposium every two years in April (next > is April 2008) and provide speakers and workshops in relevant GIS > subjects. ESRI's ArcGIS software holds the market majority and has > embrace Python language as a preferred scripting, customization language. > One area we have trouble with for our symposium is getting instructors > for Python workshops. The symposium is in Kansas City on April 20-24, > 2008 and the Python course would likely be held for 4 hours on Sunday > April 20th. The instructors and speakers as well as the planning > committee are volunteers to keep the cost down to symposium attendees. Do > you have anyone that might fit as an instructor for an Introduction to > Python language course in the Midwest? > > > > Eric Foster, Senior Transportation Planner > MoDOT, 600 NE Colbern Rd. Lee's Summit, MO 64086 > (816) 622-6330 >