Talking Django smack at the Billy Goat.
Some of the Chicago Perl Mongers got together for drinks last week. We started at one place, decided it was too crowded, went to another, and finally ended up at the Billy Goat Tavern, along the way talking about all sorts of different things, some of them Perl.
That's the best sort of Perl mongers meeting, and was always my intent with the idea. Put a bunch of smart people together in an unstructured environment and let the conversation go where it will, often in unexpected directions. Although some people might call this "networking", I prefer the no-label version. It's not something that you get out of a group of people watching someone go through a slide deck.
I had just watched Cal Henderson's "Why I hate Django" talk, and it makes for a lot of interesting conversation. The hook is the normal geek bonding over hating something (anything), but despite the comedy Cal has a lot of interesting things to say about web application architecture. Indeed, most web frameworks have these same problems (including all the Perl ones I think).
The talk mostly speaks for itself.
I'm the author of Mastering Perl, and the co-author of Learning Perl (6th Edition), Intermediate Perl, Programming Perl (4th Edition) and Effective Perl Programming (2nd Edition).
That was a great talk.