[roch-pm] Perl.com Newsletter: Turning the Tides on Perl's Attitude Toward Beginners (fwd)

Thu May 31 09:30:08 CDT 2001

-- 
Brian Mathis
Direct Edge
http://www.directedge.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 15:51:34 -0700
From: Perl Newsletter <elists-admin at oreillynet.com>
To: Perl Newsletter <perl at paprika.oreillynet.com>
Subject: Perl.com Newsletter: Turning the Tides on Perl's Attitude Toward
    Beginners

         www.perl.com update
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Hello, world! I hope you all took full advantage of the long
weekend. I certainly did. This is Simon Cozens, managing editor
of Perl.com, bringing you the latest goings on from the world of
Perl.

* Perl at large.

The big news this week is that Brian Ingerson has released the
latest version of Inline, version 0.40. Inline is an absolutely
fantastic module which makes it very, very simple to interface C
code with your Perl programs. The name "Inline" comes from the
way the code is fed to the Inline module as strings in your
Perl program: You say something like

    use Inline C => "int add(int x, int y) { return x + y; }"

and Inline goes away and parses the C code, determines how it
should look as a Perl function, creates the magic linkage between
C and Perl, compiles it, and caches the compiled copy. The net
result is that you now have a new Perl subroutine, 'add', which
takes two arguments and adds them together.

This release introduces a few interesting new features, the most
important is a replacement for ExtUtils::MakeMaker that allows you
to easily create Inline modules for distribution to CPAN. It also
creates more user-friendly object names: Older versions would
create files with an MD5 sum in the name
(Foo_C_f6bc0ccd73ffbfb789272809248cfd4d.so and the like), but the
new version calls it simply "Foo.so", with an information file that
holds all other details Inline needs to know about.

Brian's also explained to perl5-porters what he's planning on doing
for version 0.50:

    When Inline::MakeMaker is used by an extension module author,
    the 'make dist' rule will be overridden to tell Inline to set
    things up as if it were just a regular XS module. For 'Foo.pm',
    the generated 'Foo.xs' and friends will be packaged, so it will
    look like a normal XS-based distribution. Almost...

    There is still a call to 'use Inline' that must be dealt with.
    The only thing that needs to result is DynaLoader loading the
    correct object. This is easily less than 50 lines of code. So we
    need a little runtime stub of 'Inline.pm' to be loaded. (By the
    way, Inline can already deterministically tell it is being invoked
    by a preinstalled module, and in that case it never rebuilds.)

    So how to distribute the stub to everyone? The answer lies in
    having the generated 'Makefile.PL' contain an embedded version of
    the Inline stub that it can install or upgrade.

    So that means that every Inline-based module like 'Foo.pm' will
    contain a little piece of Inline to help it get going (if there
    isn't one installed already).

Yet another Perl Conference (http://yapc.org/America) is now only
two weeks away, and The O'Reilly Perl Conference
(http://conferences.oreilly.com/perl5) is coming soon. Both look
to have very exciting schedules, so make sure you're booked to go.
If you're at The O'Reilly Perl Conference, I'll see you there.

* What's new on Perl.com?

Once again, Leon Brocard's produced this week's Perl 5 Porters
summary, bringing us the latest news on Artur Bergman's 'iThread'
module, the Perl bugs database:

    http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/05/p5pdigest/THISWEEK-20010527.html

Bryan Warnock has done the same job for the Perl 6 mailing lists.
This week saw the release of another design document, the Assembly
language standard, as well as technical discussion about the format
and specifications of the virtual machine (and some surprising news
about its suggested name). Discussions on the language front seemed
to be quieter than before, with the previous thread on properties
being finished off and an interesting question about array slice
syntax. Read all this and more at:

    http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/05/p6pdigest/THISWEEK-20010526.html

In last week's newsletter, I reported on Casey West's work with the
beginner's mailing list and resources. In this week's feature article,
Casey explains why he felt the mailing list was needed, where it's
going and how it's being received. He also offers some advice for all
of us to help conquer the elitism he feels has saturated the Perl
community and live up to Larry's wish: "I want to see people using
Perl to glue things together creatively, not just technically but
also socially. ... If someone stinks, view it as a reason to help
them, not a reason to avoid them."

    http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/05/29/tides.html

Enjoy!

SC

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Turning the Tides on Perl's Attitude Toward Beginners
http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/05/29/tides.html?wwwrrr_20010529.txt
Casey West is taking a stand against elitism in the Perl
community and seems to be making progress. He has launched
several new services for the Perl beginner that are being
enthusiastically received.

Taking Lessons From Traffic Lights
http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/05/22/trafficlights.html?wwwrrr_20010529.txt
Michael Schwern examines traffic lights and shows what lessons
applied to the development of Perl 6.

Exegesis 2
http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/05/08/exegesis2.html?wwwrrr_20010529.txt
Having trouble visualizing how the approved RFC's for Perl 6 will
translate into actual Perl code? Damian Conway provides and
exegesis to Larry Wall's Apocalypse 2 and reveals what the code
will look like.

Off The Wall: Larry Wall: Apocalypse Two
http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/05/03/wall.html?wwwrrr_20010529.txt
Larry Wall produces the next episode in his series of
"Apocalypses": glimpses into the design of Perl 6. This week, he
explains how Perl 6 will differ from Perl 5 in terms of chapter
2 of the Camel Book: fundamental data types, variables and the
context and scoping of the language.

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