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Greetings, Perl hackers. This is the Perl newsletter, a bi-weekly mailing
to convince you, your friends, your family, your co-workers, and people
you meet in airports to visit Perl.com. Remember, if you haven't pointed
at least ten people to an article or weblog this week, you haven't done
your job!

Because some people take convincing, here's what's happened in Perl over
the last couple of weeks.

* Perl News in the Wild

The YAPC::Asia 2006 team published videos from their Tokyo meeting:

<http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=subject:%22yapc%22>

Parrot pumpking Leo Toetsch announced the release of Parrot 0.4.4,
"Feather," which includes new languages such as APL, Pheme, and something
called Perl 6:

<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/15/0922235>

The YAPC::Eu 2006 team announced the official Birmingham conference
website:

<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/12/1748220>

The Austrian Perl Workshop 2006 announced its dates: June 8 and 9:

<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/11/0115245>

* Perl on ORN

Alex Gough has an odd job. He's the only programmer for about 500 miles.
Yes, there's Perl on every continent--he's in Antarctica. His problems
are about the same as yours though: collecting, analyzing, and charting
data. Here's how Alex uses Perl and the CPAN to make pretty pictures of
weather patterns with very little code:

<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/05/04/charting-data.html>

Data::Dumper is a well-known tool for debugging and serialization. It
has some limitations, though, notably in its handling of subroutines
and closures as well as its all-at-once nature. Data::Dump::Streamer
is a newer module that does many of the same things better. Here's
how it works:

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/cpan_module_review_datadumpstr.html>

Patrick Michaud is the Perl 6 pumpking. Here's what he has to say about
his job in his own words:

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/people_of_perl_patrick_michaud.html>

Robert Pratte started his new ONLamp weblog by asking why Perl's
perception has waned for large, mission-critical applications:

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/of_oysters_and_perls_or_perl_i.html>

Perl Hacks co-author Curtis Poe wondered how to love a framework you've
never used:

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/how_to_love_a_framework_youve.html>

Andy Oram praised Volity, an open source platform for multiplayer
interactive games. Volity includes Perl bindings:

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/volity_opensource_interactive.html>

Patrick Michaud announced that Perl 6 runs on Parrot:

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/perl_6_on_parrot.html>

Dave Cross wondered who uses MVC frameworks in Perl after looking at all
of the frameworks in all of the other languages:

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/mvc_frameworks_in_perl.html>

Your editor continued his 30-post series (yep, still crazy), which
documents his work refactoring a legacy Perl system. Which system? Just
the one that runs Perl Monks.

This series quickly turned from "How to improve the code?" to "How to
refactor and improve tests." If you feel comfortable with Test::More and
other procedural test modules but find them less than capable of dealing
with large systems by themselves, Test::Class may prove a helpful
additional abstraction. How do you migrate tests though? Easy....

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_13.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_14.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_15.html>

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_16.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_17.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_18.html>

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_19.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_20.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_21.html>

There will be no Perl newsletter next fortnight, as your editor will be on
holiday and no one in the office felt comfortable replacing him.

Good, bad, your editor is the one with the newsletter,
- c
chromatic@oreilly.com
Editor, Perl.com, et cetera

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Taught by Geoffrey Grosenbach, May 25th 2006, NYC
Learn how to get rockin' with Ruby on Rails
by one of the world's leading Rails developers.

http://www.oreilly.com/go/carson_rubyonrails

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*** Featured Articles ***

Charting Data at the Bottom of the World
Alex Gough has a curious job. He's the only programmer for 500 miles at a
remote Antarctic research station. His problems are like your problems
too, though--gathering, manipulating, recording, and displaying data.
Here's how he uses several CPAN modules to make pretty charts and graphs
with almost no work.

<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/05/04/charting-data.html>

***

Unraveling Code with the Debugger
Reading other people's code can be difficult, especially if you have no
idea what happens when and where. Understanding code flow is vital to
maintenance and bug fixes, but littering code with print and debugging
statements is tedious and prone to error. There's another way: use the
debugger! Daniel Allen demonstrates how to pinpoint a problem with Perl's
debugger.

<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/04/06/debugger.html>

***

Using Ajax from Perl
The recently rediscovered Ajax technique makes the client side of web
programming much more useful and pleasant. However, it also means revising
your existing web applications to take advantage of this new power.
Dominic Mitchell shows how to use CGI::Ajax to give your Perl applications
access to this new power.

<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/03/02/ajax_and_perl.html>

***

Advanced Subroutine Techniques
Subroutines seem like a basic building block of code. They're simple and
easy to understand and use, right? That's true--but there are a few
advanced techniques to make your code more maintainable and robust. Rob
Kinyon goes beyond making sense of subroutines to making subroutines work
for you.

<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/02/23/advanced_subroutines.html>

***

Managing Rich Data Structures
Perl is so good at handling plain text files that it's seductively easy to
use them when you need something better. Yet sometimes using a
full-fledged database is just Too Much Work. If only Dave Baker had
written an article on using complex, persistent data structures with
MLDBM.

<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/02/16/mldbm.html>

***

Debugging and Profiling mod_perl Applications
How do you use the debugger on a mod_perl application? How do you profile
an application embedded in a web server, with multiple child processes?
Don't worry. Where there's Perl, there's a way. Frank Wiles demonstrates
how to debug and profile mod_perl applications.

<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/02/09/debug_mod_perl.html>

***

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# posted by giu @ 5:09 PM