Book - New Releases

Perl.com update
--------------------------------------
The Email for www.perl.com Subscribers

===================================================================
FREE Cross Training For Web Developers

FREE training webcasts, software, and how to's from Dr. Dobb's, O'Reilly
Media, and Microsoft. Choose from more than 40 webcasts, and see if you're
eligible to receive a FREE copy of Visual Studio Standard (NFR).

Complimentary copies of Visual Studio Standard (NFR) are limited, so act
today! http://www.oreilly.com/go/learn2asp_perl

===================================================================
Hello, everyone. Have you ever stared in horror at the television set (or
computer screen, perhaps) as an announcer advertised that the upcoming
episode of your favorite sitcom is "A very special episode"? Your horror
stems from knowing (having heard that particular phrase before) that your
sitcom is about to air a message episode that, say, abusing drugs or
alcohol or getting cancer is just bad. It's never funny.

Fortunately, this is just an average Perl.com newsletter, no more or less
special than every other every-other-week mailing. Besides that, we don't
have an announcer.

* Perl News in the Wild

The Perl Review interviewed O'Reilly editor, TPF president emeritus,
Parrot and Punie hacker, and small press publisher Allison Randal about
all of those jobs (but not microphasic sleep):

<http://www.theperlreview.com/Interviews/allison-randal-20060412.html?up>

Allison Randal also announced the public review of the second version of
the Artistic License as well as the upcoming Perl Contributor Agreement:

<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/20/2042256>

Josh McAdams and the YAPC::NA team released the schedule for this year's
conference in Chicago:

<http://www.yapcchicago.org/the-schedule/>

Audrey Tang, Allison Randal, Jesse Vincent, and lots of other Perl 6 and
Pugs people came up with a new plan for the licensing of Pugs:

<http://pugs.blogs.com/pugs/2006/04/licensing_clari.html>

Perl Hacks went to the printer.

Perlcast interviewed professional author Steve Oualline, whose most recent
book is Wicked Cool Perl Scripts:

<http://perlcast.com/2006/04/18/interview-with-steve-oualline-of-wicked-cool-perl-scripts/>

* Perl on ORN

Your editor continued his 30-post series (yep, still crazy) that 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/2006/04/refactoring_everything_day_7.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/refactoring_everything_day_8.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/refactoring_everything_day_9.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/refactoring_everything_day_10.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/refactoring_everything_day_11.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/refactoring_everything_day_12.html>

Quick, who gets paid to hack on Perl? No, not to hack Perl--to hack on
Perl itself? Precious few people. Yet progress progresses and patches
patch and bugs unbug and time moves on and every few months, there's a new
stable release of Perl that's better than the previous version. Stable
pumpking Nicholas Clark recently lamented this situation (hey, they're all
volunteers) and wondered if other languages face this in a post on the p5p
mailing list:

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/maintaining_a_programming_lang.html>

Did you know you can write games in Perl? You certainly can. Guillaume
Cottonceau stunned the world by creating one of the best-loved open source
games, Frozen Bubble. In Perl. Victor Rodriguez recently interviewed him
about everything Perl:

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/people_of_perl_guillaume_cottenceau.html>

Dave Cross apologized for helping to write the useful Template Toolkit
book. Why? Because spammers apparently are using Template Toolkit to send
their messages. Badly.

<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/04/spamming_badgers.html>

That's it for this fortnight. Upcoming interviews include Patrick
Michaud, with a very special announcement. (No, no, no, not THAT kind of
very special announcement.)

Best,
- c
chromatic@oreilly.com
Editor, Perl.com, et cetera

===================================================================
Sponsored by ISC, Infoblox and O'Reilly

On May 11th, Internet Systems Consortium, Infoblox, and O'Reilly present
"The Next Chapter in DNS and BIND: A Book Release Webinar on Advanced
Topics in DNS Technology and Architecture". All webinar participants will
receive an electronic copy of the architecture chapter from DNS and BIND,
5th Edition. In addition, 20 lucky attendees will be drawn at random to
receive a free autographed copy of DNS and BIND, 5th Edition!

Register Now.
http://www.infoblox.com/events/webinar/oreilly_dns_bind_cricket.html

===================================================================

*** Featured Articles ***

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>

***

Test-Driving X11 GUIs
Is GUI testing as difficult as it seems? Maybe not, with the right testing
libraries. George Nistorica shows what X11::GUITest can and can't do to
make your Unix and Unix-like applications more robust.

<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/02/02/x11_gui_testing.html>

***

===================================================================
BUY 2 BOOKS DIRECT, GET 1 FREE

Take advantage of O'Reilly's "Buy 2 Books, Get 1 Free" offer by cutting
and pasting code "OPC10" into our shopping cart. Any orders over $29.95
also qualify for free shipping in the US.

http://www.oreilly.com/store/?CMP=NLC-0Z7E11150382&ATT=perl3

===================================================================
------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit our Sponsored Developer Resource Pages and learn about cool
stuff from our sponsors!

Downloads - Free Training - Webinars - Updates

Altova's Developer Zone: http://www.xml.com/zones/altova
ASP.net 2.0 Training Center: http://www.oreilly.com/go/ms_aspnet
Driver Agents Driver Updates: http://www.oreilly.com/go/driver_updates
GoToMyPC(R) Remote Access: http://www.oreillynet.com/etel/citrix/

Coming soon:
Stylus StudioTutorials from DataDirect!
------------------------------------------------------------------
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
------------------------------------------------------------------

# posted by giu @ 12:09 PM