Monday, June 12, 2006
20% More Monday in the Perl Newsletter
Perl.com update
--------------------------------------
The Email for www.perl.com Subscribers
===================================================================
Crack the Code and WIN a Nokia 770
Be the first to crack thawte's Crypto Challenge IX and you
win a new Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, supporting Google Talk,
wifi and Bluetooth connectivity. It's not just a brainteaser
for geeks - it's THE challenge for skilled code-breakers.
http://www.oreilly.com/go/thawte_prl6906
===================================================================
Hello on non-Friday, Perl Hackers. No, your calendar didn't suddenly
break. Everyone at the O'Reilly Network took a vote and decided to send
you a Perl newsletter at a different time, just because we had something
to say.
Here's what's new in the world of Perl.
* Perl News in the Wild
Josh McAdams announced that YAPC::NA is on its way at the end of
the month. Register now:
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/02/0752204>
Allison Randal announced release candidates of the Artistic License
2.0 and the new TPF Contributor agreement:
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/02/0754250>
Best Practical Solutions, the company behind RT, announced its acquisition
of only the best revision control system in the world today, SVK:
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/08/0351200>
Perlcast interviewed Chicago native brian d foy about The Perl Review
version 2.3:
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/12/0942244>
Adam Kennedy created a new website to discuss Perl and Windows, especially
the Vanilla and Strawberry Perl projects (intended to make CPAN and Win32
extremely compatible even if you don't use Visual Studio or Cygwin):
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/12/0942219>
* Perl on ORN
Andrew Dunstan is one of the small cadre of dedicated hackers bringing the
power of Perl to the PostgreSQL database. He recently provided a roadmap of
what he would like to see in versions 8.1 and 8.2. Here's what PL/Perl can
and cannot do, and soon will be able to do, with this powerful and free
relational database:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/databases/2006/05/25/the-future-of-perl-in-postgresql.html>
One of the most popular uses for Perl is still web client programming--
especially accessing remote websites, slurping down data, manipulating it,
and creating nice reports. LWP and WWW::Mechanize are still the gorillas
here, but sometimes a very specific task like this needs very specific
syntax and access. Yung-chung Lin recently created a new set of modules
that implement a domain-specific language for web client programming:
FEAR::API. Here's how it works:
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/06/01/fear-api.html>
Folksonomies and tag clouds provide interesting ways to structure and present
lightweight, crowd-generated metadata. It's easy to build them with Perl and
other flexible, dynamic languages. In an excerpt from a new downloadable PDF,
Jim Bumgardner gives design tips for building and working with these new
interface elements:
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2006/06/08/designing-tag-clouds.html>
In our podcast, your editor recently interviewed high-performance Perl hacker
and LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick about the trials and troubles of
running a large site and how Perl makes his life easier:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2006/05/22/distributing-the-future.html>
Your editor nearly finished 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.
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/176>
Curtis Poe questioned the inclusion of Perl in LAMP:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/lamp_linuxsapachesmysqlphpytho.html>
... then he called us all not-engineers:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/06/why_were_not_really_engineers.html>
Perl rock star Andy Lester offered advice on spreading your knowledge and
becoming a rock star just like him:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/06/spreading_knowledge_through_ta.html>
(Andy Lester doesn't really think of himself as a rock star. You, yes
you, the one reading this, are just as important and valuable as anyone
else in the Perl community. You have just as much to contribute. If
you've held back because you think you could never possibly teach the
"experts" anything, please speak up; all of us were novices once, and
none of us know everything, and we all welcome new voices and new thoughts.)
Your editor really was a rock star once though,
-- c
chromatic@oreilly.com
Editor, Perl.com, et cetera
===================================================================
Your Skills Are in Demand. More Skills. More Demand.
Choose from 45 webcasts organized by trackJSP, PHP, and
ColdFusion. Each track has been designed to take advantage
of your existing Web development skills and includes insightful
content contributed by Dr. Dobbs and OReilly.
http://www.oreilly.com/go/learn2asp_jav
===================================================================
*** Featured Articles ***
FEAR-less Site Scraping
Many web programmers talk about "domain-specific languages" as if
defining functions and methods were a new discovery. A real domain-specific
language provides concise syntax and symatics for a particular purpose,
such as Yung-chung Lin's FEAR::API. He explains how this toolkit allows
you to scrape, modify, store, and re-present web data easily, effectively,
and economically.
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/06/01/fear-api.html>
***
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>
***
===================================================================
Add Tag Clouds to Your Site
"Building Tag Clouds in Perl and PHP" teaches you skills
for constructing your own tag clouds. You can use these techniques
to create other kinds of innovative, Web 2.0-style interfaces.
In this PDF you'll learn:
-what is and isn't a tag cloud
-design tips for using tag clouds effectively
-how to create your own tag clouds in Perl and PHP
Just $9.99!
<http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/tagclouds/index.html?CMP=NLC-9C6I64005015&ATT=w1>
===================================================================
------------------------------------------------------------------
$300 Rebate on Linux/Unix Certificate Series
Plunge into the art of system administration with our four-course Linux/Unix
System Administration Certificat Series, spanning basic directories to sed,
awk, and perl. You'll get your own root server to work on, free O'Reilly books
for reference, and upon completion, certification from the University of Illinois
Office of Continuing Education. Right now, pre-enroll in all four courses
and receive a $300 instant rebate! http://www.oreillylearning.com/
------------------------------------------------------------------
Interested in sponsoring the Perl.com newsletter? Please email us at
advertising@oreilly.com for rate and availability information.
Thank you!
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your newsletter subscription options, please visit
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/nl/home
For assistance, email help@oreillynet.com
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
1005 Gravenstein Highway North
Sebastopol, CA 95472
(707) 827-7000
------------------------------------------------------------------
