MadMongers

Perl Weekly

Issue #52 - July 23, 2012 - Plack 1.0 released

Hi,

I am sorry for sending out this newsletter later than usual. I was too busy working on the Perl 6 Maven site. I finally fixed the code that generates the HTML pages from the simple XML-ish format, that I am still using to write my courses. This mean now I 'only' need to update the content and it will become useful again.

Besides, this is issue #52

Enjoy...

Announcements

Plack 1.0 and the future
I don't know if you attach any meaning to the 1.0 release number, but if you do, Tatsuhiko Miyagawa has just released version 1.0 of Plack. He also describes how the development will change

Articles

Comparing two major releases
Reini Urban recently switched the cygwin perl from 5.10 to 5.14 and released version 4.6.0 of the Parrot Virtual Machine. In this article he compares the two processes.

Deploying a Dancer app on Heroku
Step-by-step instructions by David Moreno.

The 19 most important file-system tools in Perl 5
This is the first part of a mini-series I started to write on the Perl 5 Maven site. I use so much boiler-plate code when writing these scripts that I though it might be interesting to describe and explain the parts.

Any::Moose is out, Moo is in!
Sawyer X has switched.

Announcement: the App-Notifier CPAN Distributions

Discussion

CPAN modules for making HTTP requests
Neil Bowers is back with his awesome comparison articles. He compares as many as 20(!) different modules that can handle the simple task of making HTTP requests.

Testing

How to test Perl 6 modules and scripts?
I think the only reasonable way to ensure a piece of code survives an upgrade is to write automated unit tests. This is true regardless of language. Even in the conservative Perl 5 there were and there will be changed that break code. And don't even talk about PHP, Python or Ruby. Naturally Perl 6 still has some time till it stabilizes, so it is even more important to write unit-tests for your Perl 6 modules and scripts.

Science

Welcome all scientists and friends to perl4science.github.com
Joel Berger has announced a new web site and a new mailing list for scientists who want to use Perl. He would like to make this a bridge between scientists who are looking for a programming language and Perl.

The Quantified Onion is not just another echo chamber
David Mertens is planning to go out and engage the people who do science and present the Perl solutions that can help them.

Code

Integrating perlcritic and vim

Varys' Little Birds
While standing on the shoulders of giants, Yanick Champoux is catching birds. He also created a tool to do system checks that he could install on different machines and query via a web server. - But frankly, I did not have time to look up all the words in a dictionary...

Fun

Perltuts - Interactive Perl tutorials
Viacheslav Tykhanovskyi (vti) started to put together an engine that would allow anyone to type code snippets in a browser and evaluate on a server. This can change interactive Perl training a lot. If he can make it work really well.

Grants

Devel::Cover Grant Report for June
Paul Johnson is reporting on his progress with coverage reporting.

Jobs and Recruiters

Perl and Recruiters: Part Two
John Napiorkowski collected the earlier posts about the subject and tried to synthesise the approach the Perl.org community might need to take.

Slides

Intro to Git for Perl Hackers
The OSCON presentation given by Mark Allen.

Parrot

4.6.0 Parrot 'Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill' Released
This is the release Reini Urban prepared ....

Perl 6

From Iterative to Functional Perl 6 Code
This is the first guest-post of Moritz Lenz on the Perl 6 Maven site. He writes a simple piece of code - looking for a file in a set of directories - and rewrites it several times. It both shortens the script and makes use of features available in Perl 6 but not in Perl 5.

Announcing the winner of the Perl 6 Coding Contest 2011
There were six contestants. Who is the winner?

Weekly collections

(xiii) MetaCPAN favourites weekly report

Perl 5 Porters Weekly: July 9-July 16, 2012

(xxxviii) stackoverflow perl report

The self promotion section

Beginner Perl Maven e-book
Finally I managed to set up my own 'shop' to sell the Beginner Perl Maven e-book using PayPal. To celebrate this I am selling the e-book at 50% discount till 25 July 2012. That leaves you two days to buy the e-book at the lower price. (The price includes unlimited access to the newer editions.) The only issue is that you have to be already registered and logged in the Perl 5 Maven site before you can purchase the e-book.

Events

I usually list the next 3-4 events here. The list of all the events can be found on the web site. If your Perl event is not listed there, please let me know.

YAPC::EU 2012
August 20-22, 2012, Frankfurt, Germany

Moving to Moose Hackathon
August 25-30, Preikestolen Mountain Lodge, near Stavanger, Norway

YAPC::Asia Tokyo 2012
September 27-29, 2012, Tokyo, Japan

Italian Perl workshop
October 11-12, 2012, Bologna, Italy