We all know that Python, Perl and Ruby (ok, and PHP, and probably other languages) are always stealing ideas from one another. This is a nice thing to do.

After programming a few with Python there is a couple of details I like. I know not all are possible to implement in Perl. Some of them are, and I would love if they were. I know not all people agree with me (that good, too). Nevertheless, I present here a couple of ideas.

Although I do not like relying only in indentation for blocks, I like the fact that conditionals and loops does not need parenthesis. It makes the code much more legible. I imagine that to make this in Perl it would be crazy. Good enough we don't need them when using it as a modifier.

The Spouse’s Program begins tomorrow morning. Those of you participating should come to the opening ceremonies at 9am at the Lowell Center, where I’ll introduce you to our Spouse’s Program organizer, Julia. Dress casually and in comfortable shoes. 

Tomorrow you’ll be taking tours of the State Capitol, Camp Randall Stadium, and of Wollersheim Winery. Later in the week you’ll be visiting the Chazen Museum of Art, going sailing, participating in a craft workshop, and taking a guided tour of State Street (a shopping/restaurant district). 

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

To better fit CPAN's naming conventions, Reddit::API has been renamed to Reddit::Client. As there are no dependencies in the reverse lookup graph, Reddit::API is scheduled for deletion.

Reddit::Client begins its life at 0.02 with mostly complete unit tests (thanks for the footnote, Gabor), some refactoring, and a few bug fixes. Enjoy!

Since YAPC::Asia Tokyo 2010, we have been hosting voting on "Best Talk Award" for talks that go on YAPC::Asia Tokyo. We are also giving away prizes for the winners of these awards -- for 2010, we gave a Macbook Pro with all the bells and whistles, and last year we gave a dandy ergonomic chair.

So we were thinking what to do this year... and here's what we got: We're going to give the winner a trip to YAPC::NA or YAPC::EU. Runner-up prize will be trips to local PM meetups in Japan.

This award was originally created in hopes that giving talks at YAPC::Asia Tokyo will also also be rewarding for the attendees, and also to give them some incentive to learn more, to do more. We believe that giving them a chance to attend these conferences will be an extremely cool opportunity to mingle with people who otherwise they may never meet in person, and to feel what it's like in other conferences.

Of course, we are assuming that a Japanese local would get the award, but if somebody living abroad gets this award, we'll try to arrange something. Do visit us if you're interested!

(This is probably intuitively obvious to everyone else...)

Here is a sample Log::Log4perl configuration where the root logs at WARN, package 'Joe' logs at 'INFO', and package 'Zoe::Marie' logs at ERROR:

log4perl.rootLogger=WARN, LOGFILE log4perl.logger.Joe=INFO, LOGFILE log4perl.logger.Zoe.Marie=ERROR, LOGFILE

log4perl.additivity.Joe = 0
log4perl.additivity.Zoe.Marie = 0

log4perl.appender.LOGFILE=Log::Log4perl::Appender::File
log4perl.appender.LOGFILE.filename=/tmp/test-Log4perl.log
log4perl.appender.LOGFILE.mode=append

log4perl.appender.LOGFILE.layout=PatternLayout
log4perl.appender.LOGFILE.layout.ConversionPattern=[%r] %F %L %c - %m%n

Because of how Log::Log4perl was built, you don't need to do anything special in your code to support this multi-level priority logging -- each package can just use Log::Log4perl->get_logger() to get the the logging object and it all falls out in the wash.

(In theory, this type of configuration should work for Log4j and Log4net also.)

From guest contributor Matt Trout:

YAPC::NA isn’t just about the main conference programme - there’s often
things that get organised on the fly by attendees because somebody comes
up with an idea, or because they want to try somewhere new for lunch.

In order to make sure you don’t miss out - and to find out if somebody
has found the power cable you accidentally left in the lobby - it’s worth
keeping in touch.

To do that, there are two key resources -

 1) The mailing list:

    http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/yapc

 2) The IRC channel:

    #yapc on irc.perl.org (which allows mibbit.com if you have no client)

The mailing list tends to be used for “hey, does anybody fancy doing
X later?” ideas, and the IRC channel for “hey, does anybody fancy doing
X right now?” but that’s more down to the technology than any enforcement.

These will help you get the most out of your YAPC - and to find the
people involved in http://act.yapcna.org/2012/wiki?node=HallwayPlusPlus
if you’re wanting to met new people while you’re here too!

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

As far as I know, the YEF did receive neither a Letter of Intent nor a proper proposal for hosting YAPC::Europe 2013 yet (and I should know, as I'm on the Venue Committee)

The deadline for submitting a proposal is Thursday, 5 July.

So if you and your group are thinking about hosting next years YAPC, we would very much appreciate it if you'd send a short note (or a full-fledged proposal) to venue@yapceurope.org.

It's really not much work, and all reports from previous organizers stating otherwise are grossly exaggerated!

Here's the whole Call for Venue, and here is a detailed document on what to do to bring YAPC::Europe 2013 to your wonderful hometown. And for even more organizers know-how, check out Perl Jam an upcoming book about "How to organise a conference ... and live to tell the tale." by barbie et.al. (also available on github)

Hi Folks

caniuse.com.

Nuff said.

I've started work on my Devel::Cover grant from TPF. If you are interested you can see my report for the first week at http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.qa/2012/05/msg13184.html.

As a part of that work I have updated cpancover and moved it to a new home at http://cpancover.com.

cpancover is my project to provide coverage details for CPAN modules. Whilst useful in its own right, I also tend to use CPAN as my extended test suite for Devel::Cover. I was able to procure a server in the beta phase of http://bigv.io from the nice folk at http://bytemark.co.uk and I decided it was time for cpancover to have its own domain name.

If you would like to see a module added to cpancover please let me know. Or, better yet, patch https://github.com/pjcj/Devel--Cover/blob/master/utils/install_modules and send me a pull request.

Andrew Rodland with his really precise clock at the Hardware Hackathon.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Frankfurt has good public transportation.

The subway, tram lines and bus run from 6:00 am through 1:00 am. Connections are best looked up on the RMV website . The Frankfurt public transport relies on the "honour system" ). You are expected to buy the ticket before you board the train. For buying a simple ticket there are "hotkeys" on the machine for "inner city" and "airport". A single trip within the inner city costs €2,50 per person. The trip from the airport into the city costs €4,10.

The "Nachtbus" (night bus) runs every 30 minutes from midnight to four in the morning. The central hub for the Nachtbus is the Konstablerwache where all lines meet up at the same time to allow for switching. The "n1" and "n2" lines connect the venue to the Konstablerwache.

Taxi fares are somewhat expensive, at €1,65/€1,75 per km, plus €2,75/€3,25 fee for day/night. The transfer from the airport to the venue costs about €20, to the train station about €30. Cabs are generally safe in Frankfurt except that the driver may try to drive a longer route if they notice you're not from around the town.

Route planning: http://www.rmv.de

Nachtbus: http://www.nachtbus-frankfurt.de/33379.de.jede_nacht.html

Travel information: http://wikitravel.org/en/Frankfurt

Well, I’m just about done with my porting project.  For $work, we’ve been working on porting a fairly large codebase (the official count is nearly 2 million LOCs, although I think that probably includes whitespace and comments) from Perl 5.8.9 to 5.14.2.  Actually, our goal is threefold:

• Get our code using the newest Perl.  (Although, of course, that’s always a moving target: by this point 5.16 is out, so it’s not the newest any more.)
• Get our code using the newest Moose.  (We’re currently on 1.21, and want to go to 2.x.)
• Switch from using MooseX::Method::Signatures to using Method::Signatures::Modifiers.  In fact, this port was the primary impetus for me writing MSM in the first place (although, back then it was Perl 5.12 we were aiming at).  Now, in a bizarre sort of paradoxerie, the desire to get away from MXMS is the driving force behind completing the port.

Why anyone would want to spider CPANdeps is beyond me, but a load of idiots in the Ukraine do want to, and their bot, as well as ignoring robots.txt (just like all the other search engines in the entire world, it seems) sends requests as fast as it can. All the timeouts and the errors about CPANdeps running out of database connections must mean they get some really high quality data.

All fixed though:

/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 213.186.96.0/19 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 212.113.32.0/19 -j DROP

If this inconveniences any Ukrainian perl hackers, then I apologise. You should address your complaints to the employees of ahrefs.com, preferably attached to baseball bats, knives and guns.

Look at all the amazing stuff Robert Blackwell brought to play with at the YAPC::NA 2012 Hardware Hackathon. 

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

This image is from http://www.thersa.org/events/video/animate/rsa-animate-the-power-of-networks

See also my tweet and Google+ post about this video.

Update for Sun May 27 10am-ish EDT. . . Whoops, I should have included Stevan Little in the title of this post:

He's unnamed Perl contributor in the first image I posted. I'm listening to the original audio of the lecture from which the RSA Animate video is based and was able to find http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=685 which links to http://cpan-explorer.org/category/authors/ which is where I found this second image. See also slide 29 from the slides of the talk. The first image is obviously an illustration of the second image. Very cool. I love this stuff. And I had never heard about http://cpan-explorer.org which is just fabulous.

Also a made a second Google+ post that links back to this one.

I've been opening quite a few bugs lately for distributions failing these 2 criteria, so, I figured I'd save everyone some effort and unify it cohesively.

Reason

While it may seem a trivial squabble, ABSTRACT and LICENSE components of your meta-data are reasonably important for communicating what your dist is to the world, for both human and automated consumers.

The ABSTRACT field manifests itself in quite a few places:

• Search Results
• Author Module listings
  • https://metacpan.org/author/DCONWAY # All the empty lines are due to the lack of an abstract
• Data from MetaCPAN::API
  • http://api.metacpan.org/release/Acme-Bleach # abstract exists
  • http://api.metacpan.org/release/DCONWAY/Attribute-Types-0.10 # No Abstract

And the LICENSE field appears in a few places as well:

Moritz++ helped me implement a proof of concept eval-perl5 that works in rakudo, and uses Perlito5 (a perl5 compiler written in perl5).

This snippet could be used to implement a perl5 compatibility layer that works both in rakudo and niecza (and maybe pugs).

multi eval($str, :$lang! where 'perl5') {
    my $inp_file = "tmp.p5";
    my $out_file = "tmp.p6";
    my $fh = open($inp_file, :w);
    $fh.print($str);
    $fh.close;
    shell "perl perlito5.pl -Isrc5/lib -Cperl6 $inp_file > $out_file";
    my $p6_str = slurp $out_file;
    $p6_str.eval;
}

Do you remember when I stood up in front of the entire audience at YAPC::NA 2011 and told the whole room that I was going to post a blog entry about YAPC every single day between YAPC::NA 2011 and 2012? And the whole crowd broke out into laughter? Heh. Yeah that was funny, but I made it! Now you know that when I tell you I’m going to do something, it gets done! Woot!

Seriously though, thank you for laughing. It strengthened my resolve and pushed me to follow through with the claim. Also, thank you for choosing me and the MadMongers to run YAPC::NA 2012. We’ve had an absolute blast planning it.

In other news, YAPC::NA 2012 starts tomorrow! Holy cow being eaten by a raptor! I can’t believe it’s finally here. Can’t wait to see you all tomorrow. Safe travels.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

YAPC::Asia Tokyo 2012 is now accepting talk proposals!

If you would like to participate in the World's Largest YAPC, now is your chance!

Al Newkirk asked me to take a look at his Validation::Class module, and I did.

But instead of asking for the directions or watching the screencast, I tried to figure it out from docs.
And I took notes of my thought process.

The result is this gist: https://gist.github.com/2791412
And here's Al's answer: https://gist.github.com/2791581

So I think it was an interesting experience, and I wish more people did this kind of thing.
Because author can't enter the same river twice; once you're familiar with your project's concepts, you tend to lose the perspective on what will confuse a new user.

You don't have to be a good writer or an experienced developer to provide this kind of feedback. On the contrary, seeing the docs for the first time is what's important to make this process work.
And the author probably won't blame you for being unreasonable -- how can he if you're admitting that you don't understand what's going on and you're just dumping your thought process?