St. Louis Perl Mongers

This Wednesday: An Evening of Hacking

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 04:16:00 +0000

This month we'll meet to discuss the Duck Duck Go plugin API, as documented by DDG. After a brief discussion we will break into groups of 1 or more to hack on the API and see what fun ideas we can implement. We can end by showing off anything that people might have done. Be sure to bring neat ideas!

The location is changing for this month!

Time: 6:30 PM Wednesday June 6th

Location:

Intoximeters, Inc.
2081 Craig Road
Saint Louis, MO 63146
USA

Park near the front of the building and someone should be able to show you to the room.

Next Talk: Lies, Damn Lies, and Benchmarks (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:48:00 +0000

PM's have brought up issues with using perl on the jobs. We've all heard some version of "Do it in shell,

there's too much overhead in starting up perl", "Perl takes too long to write", or something similar.

This all applies until you have to actually debug ten levels of plumbing in the shell. Or until you actually

look at the kernel overhead of passing all of the piped data through the shell.

There are some things that are more easily done in shell, but many people avoid perl for the wrong reasons.

This month we will look at how to benchmark Perl and perl, a few things to look for when you run

the perl compiler on your system, and how to manage the tradeoff between multi-layer shell plumbing and perl startup.

One of the issues is benchmarking shell accurately using, of course, perl and Benchmark. Another is

looking whether it really takes "too long" to write non-trivial Perl vs. shell.

Next Talk: Testing in Perl

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:34:00 +0000

Perl's "testing culture" has put a premium on developing simple, effective ways to test code -- not the least of which for the perl distro itself.

Aside from Test::Simple and Test::More, there are builders and other modules that help exercise your code. I'll go over some quick ways to automate testing, from Object::Exercise to Test::Builder.

Anyone who has testing issues please bring an example.

Meeting starts 4/17/12 (TONIGHT!) @ 6:30.

Talk This Week: Git & Sneakernets

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:54:00 +0000

Ever get stuck without a network? Conferences, flights, broken hardware: whatever the reason it is a pain. Especially at conferences or hackathons, damaged networks can really screw up your day.

There are any number of ways to work around your network woes, but git is the simplest: just clone repository onto a nearby thumb drive and pass it around. Viola! Instant, painless sneakernet (unless you drop the thumb drive in your beer).

Don Ellis will start with a short introduction to git, including examples of dealing with branches, merging, and recovering from accidental commits, and cloning your empty repository.

After that we'll go through showing how the thumb drive snekernet works.

We have Free Beer (or coffee). If you don't like either Golden Draak or Chimey feel free to bring your own :-)

Meeting starts at 6:30 March 21st, at Workhors Computing's office.

October Meeting: Frickin' Robots!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 02:59:00 +0000

Speaker: Matt Follett
When: 6:30 PM Wednesday, October 19th
Where:
2414 Menard Street
Soulard, MO 63104

Abstract:

Thanks to machine learning and robotics we have amazing new technology these days, from automated vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers to bomb disposal units and war-zone safety and surveillance systems. However, this field comes with a wide array of problem spaces. From having your robot know where it is to having it navigate an area each ability has problems layered on top of each other. This talk will cover some of the problems, solutions, and history in sensing, locomotion, navigation, and overarching control systems.

Sadly, all the really cool robots are still too expensive to entrust me with, so we'll have to make do with videos.

About Matt Follett:

Matt Follett is a local software engineer who has developed a wide range of technologies over the last few years, from C++ custom network protocols to web analytics systems. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri at Rolla (now Mo S&T), where he dual majored in Computer Science & Computer Engineering. He has worked for Monsanto, Boeing, Beck Automation, and Washington University as a software engineer. He is currently moving towards completing his Masters in Computer Science from Washington University while working for a local startup hoping to help make healthcare more understandable.

February Meeting: Perl 6

noreply@blogger.com (geoffeg) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:50:00 +0000

Speaker: Matt Follett
When: 6:30 PM Wednesday 2/16/11
Where:
Announce Media
6665 Delmar Boulevard
Saint Louis, MO 63130-4544

Foo Sponsor: Announce Media

Abstract:

Perl6 has been a long time coming with the original design dating back to 2000. With releases of great Perl 6 partial implementations such as Rakudo and Niecza rolling along Perl 6 is becoming a more exciting technology every day. This talk will cover some of the features and advancements that Perl 6 provides today and try and provide some knowledge on how it can be useful today.

About Matt Follett:

Matt Follett is a local developer who has developed a wide range of technologies over the last few years, from C++ custom network protocols to web analytics. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri at Rolla, where he majored in Computer Science & Computer Engineering. He has worked for Monsanto, Boeing, Beck Automation, and Washington University as a software engineer.

Winter White Lightning Talks!

noreply@blogger.com (geoffeg) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:33:00 +0000

Speaker: You!
When: 6:30 PM Wednesday 1/19/11
Where:
Announce Media
6665 Delmar Boulevard
Saint Louis, MO 63130-4544

Sponsor: TBD

Action: Signup for a lightning talk and put your topic idea or ideas in the comment when you signup!

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/january83
Password: mongers

Abstract:

Lightning Talks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Talk) are typically between 5-10 minutes. The amount of time you will have will be determined by the number folks interested in giving talks. I'm pretty sure we have a gong too. Also talks do NOT have to be perl related. I'd love to see a good variety of topics! Fun is good too. :)

Memory Manglement

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 07:50:00 +0000

Speaker: Steven Lembark
When: 6:30 PM Wednesday 11/17/10
Where:
Announce Media
6665 Delmar Boulevard
Saint Louis, MO 63130-4544

Sponsor: Net Effects

Abstract:

Most users don't ever realize just how much of a memory hog Perl is. Being Perl, however, the language makes it easy to find out using Devel::Peek and Devel::Size. This talk uses both to peer into scalars, arrays, and hashes and shows some ways to reduce the overhead when dealing with long-lived or high-volume applications.

Viewers should walk away with enough understanding of the modules to track memory use in their own code.

About Steven Lembark:

Steven has been hacking in Perl for fun and profit since the early 90's. Much of his work has been in high-volume ETL for Finance and Bioinformatics and web back ends. His current projects are hacking DP for a web back end and aligning short sections of HIV-1 genetics using the W-curve for vaccine analysis.

Regular Expressions

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 04:37:00 +0000

Speaker: Steven Pritchard
When: 6:30 PM Wednesday 10/20/10
Where:
Announce Media
6665 Delmar Boulevard
Saint Louis, MO 63130-4544

This meeting is being sponsored by Announce Media

Abstract:

Regular expressions are one of the things that make Unix utilities (grep, sed, vi, etc.) and Perl so awesome.

In this talk, we'll go over the various flavors of regular expression syntax, look at how to use regular expressions effectively, and look ahead to the cool additions to regular expressions available in Perl 6.

About Steven Pritchard:

Steven Pritchard is a Linux guy and a hardware geek who has spent the last several years doing consulting and training, in addition to fixing all manner of random stuff at the Computer Room (http://www.computerroom.us/) in Shiloh, IL.

Introducing The Monads

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:42:00 +0000

Speaker: Aditya "Deech" Siram
When: 6:30 PM Wednesday 09/15/10
Where:
Announce Media
6665 Delmar Boulevard
Saint Louis, MO 63130-4544

This meeting is being sonsored by COMSYS.

Abstract:

Haskell monads do everything from mundane list processing and IO to complex functionality like fine-grained concurrent state management and parsing grammers. And because they are all monads, they have a consistent syntax making them very simple and elegant to use.

This talk will give a tourof these and other noteworthy citizens of this wonderful landscape. There will be plenty of practical code examples and no knowledge of Haskell is required.

About Aditya "Deech" Siram:

Aditya "Deech" Siram is a Java developer with the Neuroinformatics Research Group at Washington University. He's into functional programming languages, especially Haskell, and looks forward to the day he gets paid to use it.

Better late than never: An Evening with Git

noreply@blogger.com (Ben O) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 22:07:00 +0000

Remember "An Evening with Git," back in January?

The video of the talk is finally up!

Part 1
Part 2

Subscribe to our videos

noreply@blogger.com (Ben O) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:01:00 +0000

I just noticed that blip.tv provides an iTunes subscription service. You can download our videos to your PC and watch them as you please or transfer them to your favorite handheld device.

Click Subscribe to add us to your iTunes.

Videos from Last Night's Talk

noreply@blogger.com (Ben O) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:27:00 +0000

In case you missed Bill Odom's talk last night, you can watch it here!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

What is Modern Perl?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben O) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 17:32:00 +0000

If you're new to Perl or new to using it in a scalable, testable, and maintainable manner, you may find this helpful:

What is 'Modern Perl?'

Vim Fandango - The Extended Edition, Director's Cut

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:24:00 +0000

Speaker: Bill Odom
When: 6:30 PM Wednesday 08/18/10
Where:
Announce Media
6665 Delmar Boulevard
Saint Louis, MO 63130-4544

Sandwiches from Jimmy Johns will be provided by the always helpful Lisa Rokusek.

Abstract:

Vim deserves its reputation as one of the most powerful tools in a developer's toolbox -- but it's not exactly friendly and approachable. Even long-time users rarely employ more than a fraction of its capabilities, and new users are often left wondering why so many apparently-sane people won't shut up about how awesome it is. The stark UI, the steep learning curve, the host of idiosyncrasies... mastering Vim is a challenge, and that's putting it politely.

This talk explains why it's worth the effort.

During this presentation, we'll see real-world examples of using Vim to perform astounding feats that poor souls using lesser editors can only imagine. We'll cover ways to integrate Vim with your environment, tailor it to your work, and generally bend it to your every whim. We'll discuss important settings, advanced techniques, useful customizations, handy scripts, must-have plugins, crafty tips, and sneaky tricks. In short, we'll explore how to use Vim most effectively, so it lives up to to the awesome reputation that you'll soon be telling all your disbelieving friends about.

About Bill Odom:

Bill is a long time developer and well known member in the Perl community, and was president of The Perl Foundation from 2005 to 2007. He has worked in many languages for companies in the Midwest and both coasts, from ActionScript to XSLT, but keeps finding his way back to Perl.

Upcoming Talks

noreply@blogger.com (Ben O) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:42:00 +0000

If you enjoyed the lightning talks last week, mark your calendars for the following talks:

August 18: Vim Fandango (Bill Odom)
September 15: Introducing The Monads (Aditya Siram)

Each meeting is the third Wednesday of the month, at 6:30 PM. We meet at the offices of Announce Media, at 6665 Delmar in the U City Loop (the former Blockbuster building next door to the Market Pub House).

We are also on the lookout for sponsors for food. If you or your employer would be willing to help out the group by sponsoring pizza or other food for our upcoming meetings, we'd greatly appreciate it -- please get in touch with us!

P.S. Slides from the lightning talks will be up soon.

Lightning Talks

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 01:31:00 +0000

Speaker: You, your friends, etc.
When: 6:30 PM Wednesday 07/21/10
Where:
Announce Media
6665 Delmar Boulevard
Saint Louis, MO 63130-4544

The Jimmy Johns provided for this meeting is sponsored by Cofactor Genomics.

Abstract:

This month we will be doing another exciting round of lightning talks. Last time we heard about everything from Metro transit schedules to Moose. What will it be this time, MegaMan, Gearman, Perl6? You decide! Please reply with the talk you are going to give. Slides will be accepted up to the night before the meeting so that we can compile them together and make our lightning talks nonstop fun. We will attempt to append any presentations provided to the end of the meeting.

About You, your friends, etc.:

Who are you? What kind of hobbies do you have? What neat things do you want to share? We won't know until you tell us.

Concepts of Functional Programming

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:52:00 +0000

Speaker: Matt Follett

When: 6:30 PM Wednesday 06/16/10

Where:

Announce Media

6665 Delmar Boulevard

Saint Louis, MO 63130-4544

Abstract:

The resurgence of functional programming languages in recent years has shown that no one paradigm will efficiently solve any given problem. Instead, attempting to use the best methods for the problem at hand will lead to smaller, cleaner code. This talk will explain basic functional concepts and give examples of when and how to use them.

This version of the talk will be more expansive than the version being presented at YAPC::NA 2010. Attendees will be given the chance to help pick the most valuable and interesting topics to be covered in the shorter YAPC talk.

About Matt Follett:

Matt Follett is a developer in the Informatics team at The Genome Center at Washington University School of Medicine, where he works on high-throughput DNA sequencing projects. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri at Rolla, where he majored in Computer Science & Computer Engineering. He has worked for Monsanto, Boeing, and Beck Automation as a software engineer. He was the head of the 2009 St. Louis BarCamp. He currently resides in St. Louis, where he heads the local chapter of Perl Mongers.

NYTProf updated

noreply@blogger.com (Ben O) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:46:00 +0000

NYTProf v4 was released today. Now it can peer into string evals to give you more detail.

If you've never used NYTProf, give it a try -- its reports make it really easy to get some insight into what your software is doing.

Perl One Liner Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Ben O) — Thu, 27 May 2010 15:37:00 +0000

Here's a cool list of perl one-liner tricks. I've never written obfuscated perl one-liners much so this will help me on my way to reaching perl one-liner zen. Maybe it will help you, too!

Hidden Features of Perl

noreply@blogger.com (Ben O) — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:26:00 +0000

I came across this cool list of obscure but useful features in Perl. You may have seen some of these but I've certainly never seen all of them.

Internal DSLs

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Tue, 18 May 2010 03:12:00 +0000

Speaker: Matt Follett

When: 6:30 PM Wednesday 05/19/10

Where:

Announce Media

6665 Delmar Boulevard

Saint Louis, MO 63130-4544

Abstract:

Software development becomes increasingly complex year after year. Developers are constantly required to provide new solutions to more complex problems often with more domain specific knowledge. A popular approach to this has been to implement Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) to detach the logic required to understand the problem's domain from the programming. However, writing a full-blown DSL takes time.

An approach that has been gaining popularity year after year has been implementing internal DSLs. Internal DSLs are extensions of the host language that are still constrained by it's specifications. However, by using an internal DSL the developer can more quickly provide a many of the features of a full blown DSL while avoiding much of the work. This talk will discuss the usage, benefits, and implementation of internal DSLs. It will attempt to explain the concepts through a selection of examples.

About Matt Follett:

Geoff Gallaway's March 2010 Presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Ben O) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:42:00 +0000

Video is forthcoming, but here's the slides from Geoff Gallaway's March presentation on HTML5. There's a list of useful starting points for exploring HTML5 at the bottom of the post.

Geoff Gallaway's March 2010 HTML5 Presentation

View more presentations from stlouispm.

Links:

Test out HTML5 YouTube video using Google Chrome or Safari (some videos still play with Flash)

Check out some cool HTML5/Canvas/Javascript demos (works in Safari, too):

Keep up with the progress of the HTML5 spec (slowed down recently): http://blog.whatwg.org/

Read the HTML5 draft

CSS3 module development status dashboard

Information and examples of how to use CSS3 on your site

A book-in-progress about HTML5

A cool little demo using HTML5 audio, canvas drawing and more

Try out web font support on your site with very little effort

JavaScript library to detect browser support for various features

The Safari/WebKit developers' blog. (3D transforms and CSS animation were shown at the end of the talk)

Writing Games in Perl: I'm not as Crazy as you Think

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Follett) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:20:00 +0000

Speaker: Robert Ward

When: 6:30 PM Wednesday 04/21/10

Where:

Announce Media

6665 Delmar Boulevard

Saint Louis, MO 63130-4544

Abstract:

Once upon a time, game development was a domain reserved for only the most intrepid programmers: those willing to bear the burden of manual memory management and hours of debugging highly optimized C code. Now, however, we are entering a brave new world of game development. Modern AAA titles are increasingly using dynamic languages to create core game logic while still keeping processor intensive tasks like AI and graphics in C. Moving forward further, we are starting to see bindings for languages like Perl and Python into graphics toolkits and other optimized libraries. Now programmers from all types of backgrounds can pop open their favorite text editor and have basic games running in very short order.

Robert will be giving a brief overview of the state of the art in Perl programming and talking about the different libraries that are available. Focusing on the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL), he will take the audience through the creation of a simple game from empty file to (hopefully) fun times. Lastly, he will pontificate briefly about the place of Perl and other dynamic languages in the future of game development.

About Robert Ward:

Robert Ward is an embedded systems developer for the industrial automation company, Beck Automation, LLC. He splits his time there working on embedded automation products, industrial communication, and Catalyst based web applications. He is a graduate of the Missouri University of Science and Technology where he majored in Computer Engineering.

Perl Development History, Visualized

noreply@blogger.com (Ben O) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:43:00 +0000

Here's a cool video I came across that visualizes the commit history of Perl over time.

Gource was used to create this.