Tag Archives: OSCON

OSCON 2010: Wednesday Morning Keynotes

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I haven’t had a chance to compose my Tuesday blog posts.  Hopefully, I’ll find time throughout the day to work on them.  All that really means is that my posts will be chronologically out of order.

It’s Wednesday morning at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, which means it’s time for the introductory keynotes. The first thing I’ve noticed this morning is how crowded it is. Certainly more so than when I was last here in 2008. I don’t know if that’s just because we aren’t being given breakfast in the expo hall this year, so everyone is crowded into the area outside the ballroom. Another thing I’ve noticed is the gender makeup of the attendees. While still overwhelmingly male, I have noticed more women in attendance this year. Diversity is good.

Without any further ado, we’re getting started.

Welcome

Allison Randal, Edd Dumbill (O’Reilly Media Inc.)

This year’s co-chairs welcomed us and talked a bit about OSCON this year. Obviously, there wasn’t a lot of content, but they did mention the Android Hands-on event being sponsored by Google tonight. I did register for that, since it sounds like it will be fun.

Keynote

Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media Inc.)

First up is the namesake of the convention. Every year he presents his vision, not just for the conference, but for the future he wants to see. He has been steering his company away from being just a book publisher or a content producer, but a company trying to make the world a better place. He urges the Open Source community to think about the cloud. Don’t just think about Linux, or whatever project, but about the bigger picture and where we’re going as a society.

He is fascinated by the ability of technology to reinvent government, a concept he’s dubbed “Gov 2.0.” We fall into the cycle of thinking of government as a vending machine, something we simply get things out of, and get frustrated when we don’t. Over the last few years, he has been talking about government as a platform.

We shouldn’t think just about selling to the enterprise, but about building a better world. We all benefit when that happens.

Coding the Next Generation of American History

Jennifer Pahlka (Code for America)

The government doesn’t have to be this obscure, opaque thing we get stuff from. It can be a platform for us to work together. Currently, the majority of the municipal workforce is over 40, and a significant percentage will retire soon. This creates a huge age gap, which leads to a technology gap.

In Oakland, California, the city workers can’t search city council meeting notes online. The method of entering the data in the computer is to scan the written notes, which are impossible for them to index.

Code for America was created to encourage younger, technologically-savvy individuals to apply their talents to government. It’s designed to create technology to open up government, to make it more accessible to the citizens. It’s a little like the iPhone or Android ecosystems. Government provides the platform, essentially the data. We, the citizens, build the apps.

Keynote

Bryan Sivak (Government of the District of Columbia

Those in the government of DC are big fans of Open Source, running Linux among other projects. They’ve long talked about being committed to Open Source, partly to save the taxpayers’ money. Unfortunately, much of this commitment is all talk.

For any project used in DC, forms are required to be filled out, justifying the choice and the expense. On this form is the question, “What Open Source projects were considered?” This is often left blank and still slips through without comment.

Proprietary solutions tend to come with copious documentation and an implementation plan. Open Source projects are more open-ended, which requires people within the government to have that vision and that creativity. This goes back to the age and technology gaps mentioned previously.

It’s good that these challenges have been identified and are being addressed.

Got MeeGo?

Dirk Hohndel (Intel Corporation)

MeeGo is the result of the unification of Moblin and Maemo. It targets netbooks, handset, tablets, and just about anything designed to be more mobile than a traditional notebook. It offers a full client Linux Open Source stack, from the kernel all the way up to the user interface, including the flexibility to support proprietary devices.

Dirk went over the primary goals and philosophy of the project (to be completely open), then went on to describe the organization of MeeGo at a high level. This included both the technical building blocks and the relationship with upstream projects.

Is Your Data Free?

Stormy Peters (GNOME Foundation)

Many of us use completely Free software on our computers, some even insist on it. However, when it comes to online services, we’ve gotten lazy.

Free software was driven by two types of people. There were those who advocated that all software should be Free, that it should be available to all people, regardless of their means. There were others who used and advocated Free software because they wanted something that didn’t crash. It’s this latter It Just Works motivation that Stormy believes has caused us to get lazy about demanding Freedom from our Web services.

She asks how many of us control our own email or have alternative ways to access it if something should happen to the primary service. What if Twitter or Facebook decides to delete your account? What happens to your data? She then went through a few examples of alternative services that have open data policies, such as Identica and Tomboy Online (it’s funny, I don’t use Tomboy because I won’t use Mono).

How many of us have read the agreements when signing up for Web services? Do we know who owns our data? Can we back it up ourselves? Who owns it, both while we’re using the service and if or when we decide to delete our data?

Keynote

Marten Mickos (Eucalyptus Systems)

The shift to the cloud is causing computing to scale, both up and out, far faster and far larger than any of the previous trends (mainframes, minicomputers, or client/server).

Many of the Open Source licenses were designed in an environment where everyone runs software on their own computers, software that requires distribution to be useful. Today we’re seeing more services being offered by companies running software within their own grids. Users never run the software themselves but rather send data in and get data out.

Eucalyptus is designed to be a highly scalable platform for on-premise use. As someone who supports many thousands of hosts in many data centers, this product has intrigued me for a while. Unfortunately, I’ve never taken the time to investigate it. It’s nice to see that those behind the company are committed to Open Source, using the split model. Users are free to download and use the software, while the company sells a supported version to enterprise.

The keynote sessions at OSCON tend to drag on for a while, making it difficult to pay attention the whole time. But they are finally over for now. We have a break before the first session of the day. I’m going to try to get some work done on yesterday’s posts before starting on my long day of Perl sessions.

I’m really impressed with the wireless network today. It had its problems during the tutorials on Monday and Tuesday. Traditionally, the network becomes almost unusable on Wednesday morning. This year, however, I have been able to connect to the Internet and write this blog post without any frustration.

OSCON 2010: Monday

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Beer Samples at Rogue I awoke early on this first day of theO’Reilly Open Source Convention so I could have breakfast with Juan at his hotel. At first I thought fresh-made omelettes, bacon, and sausage were simply a better choice than the fruit and pastries offered at the Oregon Convention Center. As it turns out, no breakfast was offered at all. After breakfast, a short ride on the MAX delivered us to OSCON. I’ve already written about the tutorials, so I won’t mention them here.

For lunch, I met up with some coworkers and some friends to head across the river for lunch at Old Town Pizza. I had a small sausage and mushroom pizza, and washed that down with a pale ale.

After the Arduino tutorial, having sat down for much of the day, I grew restless. I really wanted to take a walk. More importantly, I really wanted to make my way over to Rogue Ales Public House for some beer. So I called Jonathan and we made our way over there. We each started with a four beer sampler.

I started with the Chatoe Oregasmic, finding it to be a pleasant, light pale ale with moderate hoppiness. Upon tasting it, one of my coworkers commented that it was what he expected the pale ale, which he had ordered to be.

Second in line was the Double Mocha Porter. It had a faint mocha aroma, but very little of this made its way to my pallette. I could detect a hint of smokiness, if I concentrated on it.  For something advertised as a double mocha, I was disappointed.

Having enjoyed Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale in the past, I chose for my third beer the Double Dead Guy Ale.  I don’t think I was fair to this beer. The name made me think of Stone’s Double Bastard and the Double Dead Guy Ale is nothing like that. Even so, I found it smooth with a pleasant maltiness and light hop flavors.

Saving what I expected to be the best for last, I finished with the Brutal IPA While nicely hopped, I was left disappointed after building my expectations on what I consider to be its undeserved moniker. Once I got over that, I still found it to be a perfectly enjoyabl beer. It had mild malty notes and, like the other Rogue ales I sampled, it too was smooth.  I found it to be an all around decent IPA.  Since Juan wasn’t able to join us for dinner, I bought a bottle of the Brutal IPA to share with him later.

After I had finished my samples, it was the decision of those in my party that I was criminally without beer and that, to pay penance, I was to order the Issaquah Menage A Frog.  When the bartender told me it was only available in a 12 ounce glass, I suspected that an imperial style ale.  The aroma and taste soon confirmed this.  Coming in at 9% ABV, it was not as strong as some of the ales I occasionally drink back home in San Diego, but it went very well with the beer and cheese stew I had for dinner.

And now it’s late, just a few minutes until two o’clock in the morning. I should have closed my computer and gone to bed hours ago, but I refused to do so knowing that my first day of OSCON blog entries were unfinished. Hopefully, I will have more food and beer to write about tomorrow.

OSCON 2010: Get Started with the Arduino

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Arduino and BreadboardThe second tutorial I attended at OSCON on Monday was one I had regrettably skipped when I was last here in 2008: Get Started with the Arduino.  After purchasing my Getting Started with Arduino Kit for $69.95, I tore it open like a kid in a toy store.  Inside the kit were the Arduino board itself, some jumper wires, a handful of components, including LED bulbs and resistors, and a USB cable to allow for programming the notebook computers everyone in attendance brought with them.

In the beginning, I was shamed.  While I tried and failed to follow the Linux installation instructions, my coworker, Debbie, was able to plug my Arduino board into her Microsoft Windows notebook and get the first example running.  When the udev tip didn’t work, things were looking bleak for my attempt to control open hardware with an open operating system.  Finally, a trip to Google landed me right back on the Arduno wiki at the installation instructions for Fedora.  Finally, I could upload code to my Arduino board.  After getting the initial example to work, I modified it to change the pattern of the blinking on-board LED bulb:

int ledPin = 13;

void setup() {
    pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); delay(300);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);  delay(300);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); delay(300);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);  delay(300);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); delay(1000);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);  delay(1000);
}

While we were playing with our new toys, we were treated to the history of the Arduino project, some other open hardware projects, and some of the things people have done with them.  Unfortunately, I was too busy playing with my new toy to take notes on these things, so the history lesson, by way of Wikipedia, is left as an exercise for the reader.

The editor embedded in the Arduino IDE leaves a lot to be desired.  It’s like Microsoft Notepad with syntax coloring.  My coworker found a setting that forces the IDE to use an external editor.  Basically, all it does is to make the editing window read-only.  Files edited outside of the IDE are re-read when the code is compiled.  In short order, I was able to find a Vim syntax file for Arduino code files.

After the break, we were introduced to using the Arduino board in combination with a breadboard, which allows for the creation of more complex circuits.  I’m excited, because I still have the breadboard, components, and multi-meter I bought in college for a computer engineering class.  I’ve been waiting all these years to finally have an excuse to dig them out of the closet and put them to use.  The Arduino will be a fun learning tool when my daughter is older, too.

To commence our unstructured time, which would last until the end of the tutorial (and the day), we were shown a simple circuit to wire up between the Arduino board and the breadboard.  Using a copy of the first blinking code, we could acheive the same effect of blinking the external LED simply by modifying which pin was referenced.  I took this a step further and made my LED bulb pulse like the light on a suspended MacBook.

I’m glad I decided to attend the Arduino tutorial this year. I’ve just picked up yet another hobby I don’t have time for.

OSCON 2010: Introduction to 3D Animation with Blender

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The first tutorial I chose to attend this year at OSCON was Introduction to 3D Animation with Blender.  It was something I wanted to attend for fun instead of for work.  The instructor was Matthew Momjian, a 17 year old high school student who has been using Blender for four years.  His experience with the software showed, too.

The version of Blender available in the Fedora 13 package repository is 2.49b, but the tutorial focused on the beta version of 2.5, which has a redesigned user interface and new and improved features.  A Linux version was available on the internal cache website offered by OSCON, but it was 32 bit.  I ended up downloading a copy from the Blender website (the conference wifi doesn’t start to get really bad until Wednesday).  Unfortunately, Blender proved unstable and would frequently crash with a segmentation fault.  Matthew had provided files to serve as starting points for each section of the tutorial, so it was relatively easy to follow along, even if I didn’t complete the previous section.

Matthew walked us through generating a simple animation of a flying saucer approaching a planet and hitting it with a beam of light.  We started with simple shapes, two spheres, one flattened, for the saucer, a cone for the beam of light, and another sphere for the planet.  From there we learned how to apply surfaces and textures, manipulate light sources, and perform a simple animation.

All in all, I think the tutorial was worthwhile.  If I had launched Blender without it, I would be lost.  I’m still lost, but at least I have some semblance of an idea about how it works.

OSCON 2010: Travel Day

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It’s late Sunday night.  Actually, it’s early Monday morning.  I’m in a hotel room in Portland, Oregon, for the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON).  For the weeks leading up to this trip, I’ve felt some trepedation.  This is the first time I’ve been away from my daughter for more than a couple of days.  Now that I’m here, though, I’m beginning to enjoy myself.

At the beginning of the trip, I ran into a coworker, Juan, at the airport in San Diego, who was on his way to OSCON, too.  We weren’t able to sit together on the flight, but that worked out in the end.  A man was traveling with his son of around five years.  The son had the seat next to mine, while the father was several rows back.  I offered to trade seats with the father, so he could sit with his son.  One of the flight attendants bought me a beer for my trouble.  On top of all that, the we arrived in Portland earlier than expected.

After checking into our respective hotels, we swung by the Oregon Convention Center to register for OSCON and pick up our badges and associated crap.  Actually, a mug was included in the bag o’ stuff, which I can actually use.  Plus, the bag can be kept in the trunk of my car for use at farmers markets.

Finally, it was time for dinner.  Juan and I met up with a friend of mine from the San Diego Perl Mongers and hopped on the MAX to head downtown.  After wandering around aimlessly for a bit, I searched for Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub on my phone and we found it in short order, taking a seat out back in their new beer garden.  I washed a corned beef and turkey sandwich down with three pints of Mt. Hood Ice Axe IPA and one pint of Kilkenny Irish Cream Ale.  Shortly after we finished our food, we were joined by two more coworkers, who ordered some food of their own.  We spent some time doing what one does in an Irish pub, namely drinking and talking, then we made a failed attempt to find coffee.

That brings an end to OSCON travel day.  Tomorrow morning I will head to the convention center for breakfast and will hopefully run into more people I know (or will meet new friends).  I have two tutorials scheduled for tomorrow: Introduction to 3D Animation with Blender and Get Started with the Arduino – A Hands-On Introductory Workshop. I know these tutorials don’t appear obviously relevent to my job, but I’m looking at them as useful for relaxing and enriching.  One of the reasons I like to attend OSCON is because I return to work refreshed and with a state of mind more prone to imagining creative solutions.  So, tutorials outside of my immediate area of expertise are exactly what I need when I come here.

OSCON 2008: Wrap Up

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My third O’Reilly Open Source Conference has come and gone. Sure, it ended over a week ago, but this is the first moment I’ve had a chance to sit down to write this. Last year, I was able to spend a few hours with the free wifi at the Portland airport, but this year my flight was scheduled before 7:00 AM, so I was left with little time to write. As I have the past two years, I had a great time. It was good to see Al, Brad, and Kevin again. This year, Sam and Jonathan joined us as well. While the #oscon IRC channel has surely been vacated by now, I hope see the channel denizens again on Freenode.

About half way through the week I was accused of being a prolific blogger. Just how prolific, I wondered. So I went through the list of all of my posts prefixed with “OSCON 2008,” including this one. As it turns out, I wrote a grand total of 17,270 words. The post for Damian Conway’s Perl Worst Practices has the dubious distinction of containing the most words, at a scale-tipping 1,209. Other posts I made during the conference, but not directly related to any sessions totaled 1,608 additional words. Prolific? Perhaps.

My primary reason for writing so much about the sessions is for my own reference. These posts allow me to go back and remind myself of what I did and what I learned. I just happen to post my notes publicly, because I hope they may be useful or informative for others. In particular, anyone who couldn’t join me at OSCON. Naturally, I was a bit curious to know if anyone was actually reading my articles. So I checked.

I typically receive about four visits per day. Google’s Analytics service uses JavaScript to collect data, so I’m fairly comfortable declaring that my visitors are probably real people using real Web browsers, rather than search engines or even feed readers. The regularity of visits is curious, though. I’ll have to investigate my traffic a bit more closely. Visits to my site began to rise dramatically on the first day of OSCON, peaking mid-week when the main conference got started. Hopefully, people are enjoying my writings, because I enjoy doing it. I’ve tagged all of my 2008 OSCON posts with the oscon08 tag, which will make it easy to refer to them later.

Thinking back over what I’ve written, I’m not completely pleased with the finished product. I don’t think attempting to post entries so immediately after each session is the best approach. In the end, I don’t believe I’ve done the topic or the speakers justice. Next time, I may simply take notes in preparation for a proper article after the fact. The Tuesday night keynotes, in particular, would have benefited from this treatment.

I’ve been a fan of Damian Conway since I first attended one of his talks at a San Diego Perl Mongers meeting in late 2005. Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to see him speak at two OSCONs as well as attending his Perl training at my place of employment. There must be something about Australians, because one of the best presenters at OSCON this year was Paul Fenwick, also from Down Under. I highly recommend them both. Entertaining and educational, a far too uncommon combination.

This year I found that I wasn’t as excited about OSCON as I have been in the past. It’s been more than just this past week, too. A lot of things that once brought me joy have left me feeling empty. I didn’t know why, and assumed that I was simply too busy, trying to juggle too many balls again. I was wrong, though.

Near the end of the Perl Worst Practices tutorial, Dr. Conway was asked how he became so proficient at what he does. In response he asked who in the room practiced martial arts. No one in front of me raised their hand, but I suspect at least one person behind me, in addition to myself, raised their hand. Disappointed, he cycled through a couple other sports (cycling and tennis, I think) until he received a reasonable response. The point, of course, was that, like these sports, programming requires passion and should be practiced every day.

That’s when it hit me. I don’t write code every day anymore. I’ve been writing code as long as I can remember. My first Hello World was written in BASIC at the tender age of four. Lately, I haven’t spent any time at all writing code. I’ve been waking up early, working long hours, going to bed early, and spending what free time I have left with my pregnant wife. That has to change. So now I’m back to staying up late, doing more work from home, and stealing moments to write code; even if it’s just a few lines. I’m also working on a talk I plan on presenting to my coworkers and would also like to give at SCALE 7x next year.

Conferences are not always about the tutorials or the sessions. Sure, they offer plenty of opportunities to learn something new, but that’s almost a complement to the main event. It’s about networking with our peers. Most importantly, it’s about revitalization. My annual pilgrimage to Portland replenishes my spirit. I return refreshed and full of creative energy. The trick is maintaining the momentum.

O’Reilly, the New Gartner

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While hanging around the O’Reilly booth during the Open Source Conference last week, I picked up a coupon for 30% off the cost of Open Source in the Enterprise. I thought, great, maybe I’ll shell out a few bucks to see what this is all about. I didn’t see that $399 price tag on a PDF download coming. Not only that, but apparently one can subscribe to Release 2.0 and receive a whole six issues for the low price of $495.

I suppose O’Reilly is targeting the same market as Gartner. Companies willing to spend what, to an individual, is a lot of money to have experts tell them what to think.

OSCON 2008: The Expo Floor

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As with previous years, Wednesday and Thursday were highlighted with occasional trips to the expo hall. Not necessarily because we had any real desire to do so, but it was something to do. Exhibitor booths ranged from the large, flashy corporate sponsors, competing for prime real estate, to the Open Source projects and organizations, banished to obscurity in the far corners. I’ll say this for conference organizers, though; they know how to get people into the expo hall: provide complimentary booze and snacks following the afternoon sessions. Not that I spoke with any vendors while enjoying these niceties, but I was theoretically in a position to be accosted by the very same companies plying me with alcohol.

Every conference I’ve attended—though that hasn’t been many—have used the same gimmick in an attempt to get people to visit vendors. Each markattendee is given a “passport” with a number of vendors listed. The goal is to visit each of them and receive a sticker for the effort. The reward is entry into a contest, the odds of winning being proportional to the number of people who fall for the scam. I always start out collecting stickers, but quickly realize why I’ve never gotten as far as entering the contest. I really hate talking to salespeople. I’m not interested in any of the products being pitched and, even if I were, there’s nothing they can’t tell me that I can’t discover for myself on the Web. At one point, I’m pretty sure Eric S. Raymond even tried to hand me a flyer—I’m unsure if it was about Free Software or sex—but I politely declined and went on my way.

I was pleased to run into Alyson at the Ticketmaster booth. We met at SCALE6x in February, where she was again working the Ticketmaster booth, but also assisting us with the Perl Mongers booth. It was good to catch up with her. I was sure to tell her how much I admire what she does for the Los Angeles Perl Mongers and how I wish we had someone like her in San Diego.

Sun actually had a nice booth this year. They provided a place to relax, snacks, and a wifi network with a hidden ESSID for people fed up with the one provided by the conference. I didn’t spend much time there, but I did take advantage of the wifi as I lounged in the O’Reilly booth.

Amazon was running what I found to be an interesting gimmick in their booth. “Ninja” code. It was just a bit of self-modifying Perl written out on some poster board. Tell them what it did and get entered into a raffle. It was actually a fairly clever way of advertising for talent to hire. Heck, it got me coming back to the booth a few times, if only to make fun of it. I did spot some potential improvements.

Intel’s gimmick this year was actually kind of interesting. Everyone who visited their booth could receive a sticker with a number on it to wear. The goal then is to find the person wearing the matching number. People would post a phone number or Twitter handle on a cork board at the Intel booth for others to find. I posted my Twitter information but unfortunately my default view only includes friends, not replies. That, and the ever present fail whale made me miss my partner’s tweet. Mere minutes after the raffle on Wednesday, as I was getting ready to throw away my sticker, I hear Jonathan call out to me that he’s found my partner. As it turns out, there would be another drawing on Thursday, so we went ahead and entered. That led to an extremely annoying sales pitch. He wanted us to tell him about Moblin. Just to spite him, I told him about Snapdragon instead. What do I keep telling myself? Stupid gimmick contests aren’t worth it. What I did like about it was the social aspect. I met someone new, had a pleasant conversation, and he’s now following me on Twitter.

On Thursday at the O’Reilly booth, Brad was interviewed on camera by chromatic. I expressed my desire to see it play during a keynote, but that wasn’t meant to be. Brad uses Perl to do cool things with telescopes and munge astronomical data, which is of interest to the O’Reilly editors. He’s been asked to write an article about it, and I’m trying to convince him to give a talk at next year’s Open Source Conference.

[tags]oscon, oscon08, oscon2008[/tags]

OSCON 2008: The Twilight Perl

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It’s the last session of the conference, and I saw Damian Conway’s name on the schedule. So here I am, attending The Twilight Perl. I have no idea what to expect, but come on, it’s Damian. It’s got to be good.

Based on past experience, this is likely to be a fast-paced, highly-entertaining talk. One which will be impossible to summarize, or no doubt even to explain, here. Needless to say, if you’re not here, you’re missing out. I intend to sit back, relax, and enjoy.

He’s talking about the defining characteristic of a hacker. Particularly when they’re told that something is impossible and can’t be done. The reaction is typically, “you wanna bet?”

He just presented a slide that read, “Let’s leave behind the shackles of sanity…”

Now I’m scared.

This is a great talk. It’s a series of examples of things “you can’t do in Perl.” At least, not until Damian shows us how.

I think Brad may have taken notes. Which is good, because now I wish I had.

[tags]oscon, oscon08, ocon2008, Perl, Damian Conway[/tags]

OSCON 2008: Perl and Parrot

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It’s the first session on Friday and I’m in Perl and Parrot: Baseless Myths and Startling Realities with Tim Bunce. As people were filtering in from the break, Tim displayed one of my favorite xkcd comics for us to enjoy.

There are so many holy wars debates about whether one language is better than another. Instead, the right question to ask is whether or not the developer’s skill set is right for the job. I agree. When I look for a developer, I’m more concerned with how they think than in what language they think.

Unfortunately, Tim is preaching to the converted in this talk. Nearly the entire attendance already uses Perl and don’t believe the myths. With that, let’s conquer them anyway.

Perl is Dead

No it isn’t. It’s two decades old and still growing strong. The books aren’t flying off the presses with great speed because the Perl community already has excellent books.

The trend when searching for “web development” jobs shows Perl growing very slowly in relation to other languages, particularly PHP. However, searching for “developer” jobs shows Perl growing very strongly and holding its own extremely well.

As a lurking member of the Perl community and an active member of my local Perl Mongers group, it’s been my experience that Perl programmers tend to be quite happy with their jobs. Which, unfortunately, has made it very difficult for me to find talent.

In fact, Perl is growing faster than ever. A simple look at how much work is going into CPAN will show that. The community is strong and Perl is everywhere.

Perl Is Hard to Read / Test / Maintain

Only if you’re doing it wrongly. We have Perl Best Practices, to use as the default documentation for coding standards, leaving developers with the need to only document when they deviate from the norm. There’s Perl::Tidy, to force any Perl code into one’s own personal style. Perl::Critic for ensuring that code is being well-written and follows best practices. And there’s no end to the Test::* modules and the work being done to make testing easy. There’s even a coverage analysis tool.

Perl 6 is Killing Perl 5

In fact, Perl 6 saved Perl 5, but one has to be close to the center of the community to see that. One should notice that Perl 5.8 and 5.10 have both been released in the time that Perl 6 has been in development.

There is a culture of testing around Perl. So many tests have been written for Perl 6, and the language is being defined by its test suite. This culture has leaked out to the community. In fact, I find there now exists a lot of peer pressure in the community to do proper testing.

Perl 6 Is Not Perl

Yes, and no. Unfortunately, I was so busy trying to catch up with the last section that I missed most of the points Tim made. In the end, I feel that this is fine. If Perl 6 was supposed to be Perl 5, why not just use the perfectly decent, already existing Perl 5? Which is still being actively developed.

Perl 6 Will Never Be Ready

It’s not on a schedule and, if it were on a schedule, it would be crap. It will be ready when it’s ready. Better to do it right than screw it up. The development model encourages a lot of experimentation, and it’s difficult to schedule experimentation.

There’s No Perl 6 Code

Sure there is. Thousands of lines of Perl 6 code exist in the test suite that came about from Pugs. These very same tests are being used in Perl 6 development today in the form of Rakudo, Perl 6 on Parrot.

The important thing to note is that Perl 6 refers to a specification. It does not refer to a particular implementation. Any implementation that passes the test suite may call itself Perl 6.

From an authority in the audience (who I don’t recognize, unfortunately), we have been told that there will be a useable Perl 6 by this Christmas. A round of applause ensued.

[tags]oscon, oscon08, oscon2008, Perl, Tim Bunce, myths[/tags]