Damian Conway: Everyday Perl 6

Perl 6 is a computer scientist’s dream come true. Its many advanced features (junctions, multiple dispatch, generics, delegation, grammars, lazy evaluation, infinite lists, hyperoperators, first class functions, coroutines, partial function application, macros, metadata, etc., etc.) offer the elite überhacker entirely new levels of awesome cosmic power.


Unfortunately, for the majority of us, those incredible new features are mostly just mysterious, scary, and off-putting.
But all of those new features are also entirely optional. You don’t have to start out in Perl 6 writing autoparallelized infinite superpositions of multimorphic higher-order functions. You don’t even have to statically type your variables or encapsulate your objects.

For most Perl developers, the real and immediate benefit of using Perl 6 is this new (but eerily familiar) programming language just plain eliminates most of the minor annoyances and frustrations that plague our everyday coding.

If you’ve ever mistyped a sigil, miscounted a subroutine’s parameters, mis-used the spooky action-at-a-distance of $_, mis-sorted a numeric list, mis-indented a heredoc, mis-interpolated a variable, mis-typed a regex, or simply misunderstood a sequence of nested subroutine calls, Perl 6 has a kinder, gentler solution for you.

This talk explores some of the most useful, convenient, and un-scary ways in which Perl 6 improves on Perl 5 and offers a dozen practical reasons why Perl 6 might now be a better choice as your everyday go-to problem-solver.

Presenter bio:


Damian Conway is an internationally renowned speaker, author, and trainer, and a prominent contributor to the Perl community. Currently he runs Thoughtstream, an international IT training company that provides programmer training from beginner to masterclass level throughout Europe, North America, and Australasia. Most of his spare time over the past decade has been spent working with Larry Wall on the design and explication of the Perl 6 programming language. He has a PhD in Computer Science and was until recently an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Australia.

Festforedrag dagen før!

Damian holder også et foredrag om den (nokså dramatiske) historien bak Perl 6, på tirsdagen før dette møtet! For mere info og påmelding, se http://meetu.ps/2GKQHT .

Om dette gir mersmak, så kommer også hovedutvikleren av MoarVM (Perl 6 sin virtuelle maskin) til Oslo uken etter for å ha en Q&A sesjon på Hackeriet! Mere info og påmelding her: http://meetu.ps/2GKTr5 .


Arrangementene er gratis og åpen for alle!