Steffen Mueller

• Website: steffen-mueller.net
• About: I blog about Perl just like everyone else. Cf. http://search.cpan.org/~smueller, http://steffen-mueller.net

Recent Actions

• Commented on Fractal Diamond-Square Terrain Generation in Perl
  C implementation? Here you go. Straight conversion from Perl, though: https://gist.github.com/tsee/5461671 It's pretty naively implemented. On top of that, if you use the TCC hack (see test.pl in the gist and https://github.com/tsee/p5-XS-TCC) to compile & run in memory, then the...
• Commented on Names And All That
  Thank you for this voice of reason in the big waste of time that the recent storm of talk has been....
• Commented on $3M says Perl5 needs a new major version number
  @David: I've used PDL in the past, but am not a current user. It's a fine tool! I simply have no need for it. At work, Perl code uses the CPU time of millions and millions of EUR worth of...
• Commented on Does Perl (5) have a future?
  brian: I doubt it’d be that hard to get working on your Mac!...
• Commented on Perl 5, Perl 6, Perl 7, Perl 2013, whatever
  It's this sort of useless, energy-draining, and laughable discussion that makes the people capable of real technical innovation want to give up on perl, perl5-porters, the interwebs, and life in general. Just say no and let's all go back to...
• Commented on Does Perl (5) have a future?
  Choosing very specific bits to comment on: a) You can use ROOT from Perl. It works quite well. b) if you think writing XS is a lost cause before there’s a perl implementation even on the horizon that doesn’t support...
• Commented on $3M says Perl5 needs a new major version number
  John, 1M$ is not very useful even if you manage to raise it. Having a plan for how you're going to spend it well is what gives the value. In other words: 1M$ is a lot of money for just...
• Commented on $3M says Perl5 needs a new major version number
  The NumPy project is an investment in specific improvements. Who says that the organizations giving significant cash to TPF wouldn't shell out a lot more if there was a ambitious but specific plan that would bring major benefits for them?...
• Commented on A funny thing happened on the way to the p5-mop...
  Just for the record. I believe that your (plural) work on p5-mop is immensely valuable to the community regardless. I feel greatly indebted to you for tackling the hardest problems so I don't have to....
• Commented on Lock::File - yet another file locking module
  I'm the author of yet another locking module: Feel free to have a look at IPC::ConcurrencyLimit and specifically IPC::ConcurrencyLimit::Lock::Flock and/or list them as related modules....
• Posted Announcement for Sereal, a binary data serialization format, finally live! to Steffen Mueller

  It's been long in the making, but finally, I've gotten the Sereal announcement article in a shape that I felt somewhat comfortable with publishing. Designing and implementing Sereal was…

• Commented on Optimizing compiler benchmarks (part 4)
  Thanks for clarifying and good luck in the endeavor!...
• Commented on Booking.com dev blog goes live!
  Thank you! When we get the time, we plan to add Disqus or similar support. Basically, we want to avoid having to do moderation/spam checking as much as possible. Since it's a company blog, we'd also have to be a...
• Posted Booking.com dev blog goes live! to Steffen Mueller

  I'm proud to echo the announcement that the Booking.com dev blog has just gone live. Quoting the announcement:

  Booking.com is an online hotel reservations company founded during the hey-days of the dot com e…

• Commented on Tree, Tree::Binary, Tree::DAG_Node, Tree::Persist and Forest
  Re: Tree::Persist. I thought I fixed perms up on that one. Can you check again? --Steffen...
• Commented on Optimizing compiler benchmarks (part 4)
  Hi Reini, thanks for getting back to me. Though I do have to admit that I'm not sure whether you've answered my question. Might just be me misreading: Did you have to edit the generated code or not? Separate topic:...
• Commented on Optimizing compiler benchmarks (part 4)
  Any news on "To achieve the end results, did you have to resort to any manual changes to the generated code?"?...
• Commented on Optimizing compiler benchmarks (part 4)
  I never said your results aren't. I don't know where you get that from. What I did say was that speeding up Perl by several percent overall in the space of about one hour of hacking is great. By the...
• Commented on Optimizing compiler benchmarks (part 4)
  A general 10% speed-up (run-time, not start-up) would very much be considered a significant gain by a significant number of people on p5p. That includes at least Yves Orton and me, plus several others that I feel less confident to...
• Posted New Data::Dumper release: 50% faster to Steffen Mueller

  Data::Dumper version 2.136 was just uploaded to CPAN. It's been over a year since the latest stable release of the module. Generally, I just synchronize changes to the module from the Perl core to CPAN releases and do so very carefully with lots of development…

• Commented on Perl 5 Porters Weekly: September 10-September 16, 2012
  Minor correction to the named-parameters thread: I don't think anybody really still considers rw aliasing a valid option. The remaining viable and significant optimization is to avoid setting up @_ in case of named parameters....
• Commented on Subroutine Signatures - my Plan (v.1)
  The one point I'd like to add about @_ is that if we were to choose to not populate it, that could possibly speed up function calls by a significant amount. I am thinking it could get to ten of...
• Commented on Reading binary floating-point numbers (numbers part2)
  Nice, interesting write-up, and pertinent to what I'm up to. Thank you!...
• Commented on How many ways can I use thee, module?
  Don't forget "use parent" and "use base". But much more exciting: Prepare a Storable blob including an object blessed into a non-loaded class. Thaw it. It will load the class for you....
• Commented on When Perl is not applicable
  "and failed" is interesting because you're starting from a false premise. The goal was to speed things up and that was achieved. The major win was an improved algorithm, including caching of intermediate results, and optimal work scheduling. The run...
• Commented on When Perl is not applicable
  Andrew, cut the crap. I write at least some C virtually every day at work, for Booking.com and I'm a damn long way from leaving. I can even prove this. Check the my CPAN modules. Half of the XS modules...
• Commented on How can I grep all of BackPAN?
  grep.cpan.me is awesome, but I think if you're going to run it for the backpan, you'll need a machine with insane amounts of RAM. Last I heard, the regular grep.cpan.me was using a good chunk of a 16GB RAM server....
• Commented on I Want My Objective-C
  At first sight, this makes me a bit uneasy, but I'd be interested to see how it pans out in practice (IOW it's not fundamentally a bad idea). The best I can do to describe my concerns is point at...
• Commented on Data::Dump::Color (proof of concept)
  For data serialization, Data::Dumper is horrifically slow. Unless you absolutely need its ability to dump objects (warning, that might be a security problem, too), then I would suggest something simpler, faster, and more special purpose: JSON::XS, Avro (lacks a good...
• Commented on The Latest State of Perl ZMQ Bindings
  I'm working on a higher-level API for declarative/configuration-driven setup of networks of 0MQ components (devices in 0MQ speak). It's not quite ready for prime time yet as I'm still beating the actual configuration file's spec into shape (http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:17), but it's...

Comment Threads

• David Mertens commented on $3M says Perl5 needs a new major version number

  @Steffen, I can think of multiple projects for improving Perl's speed for data analysis. These include extensions and improvements to PDL as well as writing (finishing) Perl bindings for the Tiny C Compiler and pushing development on FFI::Raw. If I could get a full grant for doing this sort of work (i.e. something that paid a salary for multiple months) I would be absolutely delighted. However, I do not think these ideas are worth the small-dollar grants; I may as well do it out of my own intrinsic sense of motivation, which is what I have planned to do all along. Where would I begin such a…

• Joel Berger commented on $3M says Perl5 needs a new major version number

  Knowing David as I do, I highly doubt that "simplistic" use cases are all he has in mind.

• Olof Stockhaus commented on Does Perl (5) have a future?

  The only way I can see Perl 5 getting a new major version is by changing it’s name. The reason for that is the existence of Perl 6 and Larry’s decision to stick to that name for the language.

  That only leave the renaming option open. The renaming option “Perl 5” -> “Perl5” I suggested earlier would probably only work inside parts of the Perl 5 community so we can forget about that.

  At the same time we want to keep Perl as Perl, so I don’t believe in the Chocolate/Citrus/DWIM/Strawberry/… Perl strategy either, at least not as a …

• Salvador Fandiño commented on Perl 5, Perl 6, Perl 7, Perl 2013, whatever

  Ricardo, thank you for your detailed and thoughtful answer.

• Mike Sanders commented on Names And All That

  No, it wasn't (isn't!) a waste of time.

  At least not, if - by following the discussion - the powers that be realize that adding always more "use feature 'xyz'" to the perl core while maintaining backwards compatibility isn't viable any more.

  We need a new release that breaks backwards compatibility to remove cruft, makes it easier for newcomers to get the most out of the language without having to jump to all these hoops or writing all that boilerplate code all over again, every time, and that especially allows for adding new features (like the MOP).

  Extending the na…