Damian Conway

Next week I will be returning once again to beautiful Oslo, for a visit brim-full of all things Perlish.

For a start, I'm running two public classes on Wednesday March 4 and Thursday March 5,
in conjunction with Oslo.pm and Redpill Linpro.

On Wednesday, I'll be teaching the follow-up to my Perl Best Practices class (which we ran in Oslo several years ago). In this new course, Perl Even-Better Practices, I'm revisiting the guidelines that I first devised nearly ten years ago now, updating my advice and suggestions to reflect the huge number of changes both in Perl itself, and in the CPAN ecosystem, during the intervening decade. I'll be demonstrating and explaining 50 new guidelines, designed to make your Perl code even cleaner, safer, and faster.

Then, on Thursday I'm presenting OO Design for Perl. I'm quite excited to be able to give that particular class in Oslo. I don't often get the opportunity to offer it to the general public, but it's a course that I feel is particularly valuable to Perl developers...many of whom have been taught the raw syntax and mechanics of writing OO code in Perl, but who are rarely given any formal training on how to actually design software that's clean, efficient, maintainable, and genuinely object-oriented. Which is exactly what Thursday's class is all about. It's the "missing manual" on OO design...and specifically on designing for Perl's unique approach to OO.

There are still places available for either day, so if you happen to be in or near Oslo, and would like the chance to improve your Perl coding skills (whether OO or general), I'd love to see you in one or other of the classes.

But even if you can't make it to either training day, you can still catch me at the two free public talks I'll be giving on the evenings of Tuesday March 3 and Wednesday March 4. And, since both my daytime classes this year are about Perl 5, it's only fair that both my nighttime talks will be about Perl 6.

On Tuesday night, I'll be speaking at the Scotsman pub about the Perl 6 design process: how we went about developing this new language, why we made the choices we did, and what important (and often painful) project management lessons we learned along the way. It's a serious topic, but it's also a fun talk, and it will be delivered in a venue where you can legally drink enough beer to adequately cushion the inevitable shock and awe. ;-)

Then, on Wednesday night, I'll be giving a slightly less raucous talk about Perl 6 itself: demonstrating the most practical, useful, and non-terrifying features of the language...by examining the source code of a real-world Perl 6 application that I use every day. If you've every wondered why you should bother learning Perl 6, when Perl 5 already suits you so well, then this is definitely the talk for you.

I always have a great time in Norway, and I'm very much looking forward to each of these events. So, if you're a local Perl hacker, or even just passing through on your way to Narvik or Borealis or the World Cod Fishing Championships, I will hope to see you next week in Oslo.

Damian