[San-Diego-pm] August 2008 Meeting Recap

[Chris Grau]

=head1 NAME

SanDiego::Meeting::Social - social gathering of the San Diego Perl
Mongers

=head1 DATE

Thursday, 21 August 2008, 19:00 - 21:00

=head1 LOCATION

Panera Bread, Mira Mesa, Calif., USA

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This is a simple meeting recap, conveniently written in pod so everyone
can read it in whatever format they prefer.  If you lack an appropriate
formatter, well, you can always write one.  As an added bonus, if you're
using a decent MUA *cough*Mutt*cough*, a formatter is only a few
keystrokes away:

    macro pager ,pd "<pipe-message>pod2text<enter>"

=head1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Jonathan for taking these notes in Chris's absence.

=head1 ATTENDEES

In order of appearance.

=over

=item

Bob

=item

Jonathan

=item

Joe

Works with Jonathan.

=item

George

Who had to leave after the first 15 minutes.  We believe because his
boss came and picked him up.

=item

Joel

=item

Brad (augmented4th on IRC)

Returned for a second meeting.  I guess we didn't scare him off after
his first meeting last month.

=item

Brian

Brian is currently working on packaging a series of DBD::* modules for a
Windows distribution.  He would ideally have test scripts for each of
these to allow a Windows user to simply install and go.

=item

Chris

Currently looking for some Perl work.

=item

Cameron

Declared he is with Chris.

=item

Emile

Works at UCSD.  Been doing Perl there since 1998.

=item

Manny

=item

Chris

Showed up late after his child birthing class, with his child birthing
spouse.

=back

=head1 TOPICS

=head2 The Chumby -- Bob's New Friend

Following his gainful employment, Bob regaled us with tales of the
Chumby and his involvement.  Explaining that we works on the web side of
the product, ensuring different components of the Chumby can be
up-to-date.

(At least, I think that is what he said.)

=head2 Meeting Location

Joe, the newcomer, asked why meetings aren't being held at a bar.  After
we all decided there would be no wi-fi access, we brainstormed ideas of
how to get Internet at a bar.  Things like paying for the monthly bill
and buying a router, or using someone's laptop and a wireless card.  We
nominated Chris to bring both to the next meeting.  He wasn't present to
refuse the nomination.

=head2 IDEs

Joel came to the meeting with a list of questions, specifically on IDEs.
He passed around a list of common IDEs, and asked for feedback.  The
list included:

=over

=item *

EngInSite Perl Editor

http://www.enginsite.com/Perl.htm

=item *

Perl Studio

http://www.cayoren.com/Perl-Studio/features.php

=item *

Open Perl IDE

http://open-perl-ide.sourceforge.net/

=item *

Komodo IDE

http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_ide/index.mhtml

=item *

Perl Builder

http://www.solutionsoft.com/perl.htm

=item *

PerlEdit

http://www.indigostar.com/perledit.html

=item *

Visual Perl

http://www.activestate.com/Products/visual_perl/

=item *

Perl Express

http://www.perl-express.com/

=item *

PerlWiz

http://www.perlwiz.biz/

=item *

SannySoft Perl Editor

http://www.sannysoft.com/

=item *

visiPerl+

http://www.helpconsulting.net/visiperl/

=item *

PerlLive

http://softsearch.ru/programs/57-919-perllive-3x-download.shtml (Sorry,
that's the best URL I could find.)

=item *

Eclipse + EPIC

http://sourceforge.net/projects/e-p-i-c

=back

With the exception of Komodo, most people weren't familiar with the
other IDEs.  Most people preferred "vi" or "vim" because of its
portability and availability on any Unix system.  But it is difficult to
figure and he was looking for something out of the box.

A relatively recent thread on the London Perl Mongers list discussed
IDEs.

http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20070806/thread.html#9412
(or http://tinyurl.com/65hytk)

=head2 Installing Perl Modules in cgi-bin

Joel also asked about the ability to install modules in the cgi-bin
without direct access to the shell or CPAN.  Brian offered up PAR
(http://search.cpan.org/dist/PAR/), which is a tool to take modules
installed on an existing system and port them over to a cgi-bin with all
of their associated dependencies.

Joel then asked, "What if I just downloaded modules and manually moved
them to the cgi-bin?"  Typically this will work, especially if you
define the PERL5LIB environment variable, or "use lib" in your code to
define the location of the external libraries, you should be able to get
it to work.  The only issue would be any dependencies on C libraries
that are being called by the Perl modules.

=head2 Devel::NYTProf

We talked about Devel::NYTProf
(http://search.cpan.org/dist/Devel-NYTProf/), the module that was
pioneered by the New York Times and then greatly impacted by Tim Bunce,
and is now the best code profiler available.  You can see his complete
presentation with video here (http://timbunce.blip.tv/file/1130150/), or
read about it on CPAN.

=head2 SOAP::Lite

After reviewing a very slow program that connects to a SOAP server using
Devel::NYTProf we discussed the failings of SOAP::Lite and that it would
be terrific if there were some improvements made.  Then we laughed that
the acronym stands for Simple Object Access Protocol, when indeed it is
very complicated and verbose.

=head2 Humor

A couple of funny videos were mentioned, so links are included for
anyone who has forgotten to search for them, or who just needs a bit of
a laugh after a long day at work.

=over

=item *

Sales Guy vs. Web Dude

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcQ7RkyBoBc

=item *

Perl via Voice Recognition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyLqUf4cdwc

=back

=head1 NEXT MEETING

Thursday, 18 September 2008, 19:00 - 21:00.

Panera Bread, Mira Mesa, Calif., USA.

=cut
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