Friday, April 14, 2006
Debugging Your Pumpkings
Perl.com update
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Greetings, Perl fans. You're reading the biweekly Perl newsletter, a skim
through the big subject of Perl as especially seen on the O'Reilly Network
and Perl.com. Here's what happened recently.
* Perl News in the Wild
TPF has announced the opening of nominations for the 2006 White Camel
awards for community participation in Perl:
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/01/025241>
Parrot pumpking Leo Toetsch released version 0.4.3, "Cold Conure:"
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/03/0446237>
YAPC::Europe announced a call for submissions. Here's your chance to
speak in Birmingham, U.K. this summer:
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/11/1932229>
brian d foy noted the closing of The Perl Journal. (Note that brian
publishes The Perl Review, so don't panic!):
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/13/1942216>
O'Reilly Media announced the Perl track schedule for OSCON 2006, coming in
late July in Portland, Oregon:
<http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/print/e_trak/311>
Perl 6 pumpking Patrick Michaud checked in the first version of the Perl 6
compiler running on Parrot and using the Parrot compiler tools. He hasn't
announced it as of the time of this writing, so you're getting a scoop.
Note that subsequent check-ins have started to merge the tests from Pugs:
<http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.cvs.parrot/12934>
Perlcast published an interview with Bob Walsh about running very small
software companies:
<http://perlcast.com/2006/04/11/interview-with-bob-walsh/>
* Perl on ORN
Managing legacy code often requires you to be a detective as well as a
programmer. The more tools you have available to find and analyze
information, the better. One such tool for Perl is the debugger; though
shrouded in mystery and disinformation and emitting an aura of False
Laziness, if you know how to use it you can often track down just what you
need very quickly. Daniel Allen shows how the debugger can make your
coding much easier:
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/04/06/debugger.html>
Your editor started a 30-post series (yeah, he's crazy) that documents his
work refactoring a legacy Perl system. Which system? Just the one that
runs Perl Monks....
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/refactoring_everything_day_1.html>
Nicholas Clark is one of the underpraised heroes of Perl. Not only has he
been the maintperl pumpking for several excellent stable releases of Perl
5.8.x, he was also the Ponie pumpking working to port Perl 5 to Parrot,
and now he is the recipient of a TPF grant to improve Perl 5.8.x and Perl
5.9.x in many diverse and amazing ways. Yet who gives him the respect he
deserves? Perl.com--here's a short interview that explains why:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/people_of_perl_nicholas_clark.html>
Another hacker full of good ideas is Eric Wilhelm. He has a vision of
creating a public Subversion repository for the entire CPAN. You can
help:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/subversion_for_the_cpan.html>
There are more module reviews and interviews coming--and be sure to catch
the rest of the Refactoring Everything series. Your editor discovered one
amazingly useful technique for test code around day seven.
Amazingly useful indeed,
- c
chromatic@oreilly.com
Editor, Perl.com, et cetera
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