Issue #60 - 2012-09-17 - The Plack Handbook and free Dancer hosting

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Hi there,

I guess the end of the summer and the beginning of the school-year can be seen on the blogs as well. A lot of articles. Way more than I can include even if I allow for a bit more than usual.

One of the interesting topics is the list of features some people would like perl to have. It is interesting but might be very misleading. The people who write and comment on these blogs are just a small set of people (and companies) using Perl. It would be important to see what companies, eg. CTOs of companies using Perl find as important. What features they would lile to see in Perl. So this is for you, dear reader. If you are a CxO or VP RnD of a company using Perl, speak up. I'd be happy to proxy your message, in case you don't know who to talk to.

Enjoy the articles!

Gabor Szabo


Announcements

Plack Handbook

by Tatsuhiko Miyagawa (MIYAGAWA)

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa has created the Plack Handbook based on the updated version of the 2009 Plack Advent Calendar.

Free Perl Dancer Hosting at Dotgeek

While the title says Dancer, the comments indicate any PSGI based web application. In either case the service is much needed.


Articles

The return of CPANDB and the (alpha) Top 100 website

The top 100 website has a couple of interesting parts: the list of the 100 heaviest modules with the most dependencies, and the volatile list with the 100 most dependent modules.

Understanding dates using regular expressions

This is an attempt to teach the basics of regular expressions by parsing dates.

A plan for revamping and replacing the Perl debugger.

by Rocky Bernstein (ROCKY)

While Shlomi Fish is adding tests to the existing debugger, Rocky Bernstein is working on a replacement and Eric Johnson (kablamo) is working on Vim::Debug. Interesting times. I hope something improved will come out of this that can be easily hooked into GUIs and IDEs and won't be restricted to the command-line enabled people.


Discussion

Features Perl 5 Needs in 2012

chromatic started out with a list of features, but quickly others followed and commented with their requests for features. Some of the features are difficult to add, the others are even more difficult. Of course none of this will happen unless someone puts in the time and energy. Either as volunteer or as a paid developer.

3 features I would like to see in Perl

Though Kirk Kimmel mentions 3 features, he put speed as the number one feature he would like to see.

Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby Job Trends on Indeed.com

It is falling. Sharply. Java is falling even more. Even Javascript is falling. Is that the bad economy? What makes me worried is actually the comment that reveals there are twice as many Python and Ruby developers on oDesk, and 16 times more PHP developers, than Perl developers.


Testing

CPAN Testers Summary - August 2012 - Wish

In his monthly report, Barbie mentioned the progress he made cleaning up the code-base of CPAN testers making it easier to contribute code. He also mentioned the CPAN Testers Fund which makes it easy to contribute money towards the project. Slightly unrelated, Kenichi Ishigaki has been working on CPANTS. I hope that project gets somehow more integrated in the other CPAN-related sites.

setting global expectations with Test::Routine

by Ricardo Signes (RJBS)

An interesting look into the billing system of (I think) Pobox. What do you do when at mid-term - as it is always the case - a client wants to change her subscription. Do you reduce the left over paid period? Do you charge the extra for the left over period? Do yo charge for a full period taking in account the money still left from the other subscription? And how do you test it? Without sending bills?


Releases

Announcing DBIx::Class::MaterializedPath

by Arthur Axel "fREW" Schmidt (FREW)

When you are not using PostgreSQL, and you still would like to store tree-like data in a table, fREW Schmidt has the solution. Currently, it only works on perl 5.16 as it uses some of the new features there. I am sure it can be worked around, but this might help people understand how upgrades save time and money.

Some new Blio features

by Thomas Klausner (DOMM)

Blio is the 'blogging engine' of domm. It does not have its own web site yet(!), so the new features are listed on domm's web site created with Blio.


Tutorials

Using jqGrid with Catalyst: Tutorial with Examples for Newbies

Nolan Joseph Axford (aka j0e) has cerated a number of tutorials for newbies. This is the first one. 'jqGrid is an Ajax-enabled JavaScript control that provides solutions for representing and manipulating tabular data on the web'. Catalyst is the well known Perl MVC web framework.


Fun

Web Service one-liners with Dancer

If I remember correctly, Yanick was one of the best Perl golf players around, back in the days when golfing was a regular pastime for Perl hackers. He is now taking it to the web.


Grants

Devel::Cover Grant Report for August

by Paul Johnson (PJCJ)

The report of Paul Johnson

Fixing Perl5 Core Bugs: Report for Months 29 & 30

by Dave Mitchell

Dave Mitchell reporting for July and August.


Perl 6

Parsing command line arguments in Perl 6

For Perl 5, there are lots of modules handling this. Perl 6 has built-in infrastructure for parsing command line arguments.

How I learned to stop worrying and install the panda

Where Panda is the 'cpan client' for Perl 6


Weekly collections

The self promotion section

23+2 Perl based open source products

by Gabor Szabo (SZABGAB)

This is the list of basically all the Perl-based open source products I could find. I used Alexa for ordering them, but that's not the point. The point is to understand the types of products built with Perl and if they are backed by one or more businesses or if they are volunteer based.


Events

I usually list the next 3-4 events here. The list of all the events can be found on the web site. If your Perl event is not listed there, please let me know.

Portuguese Perl workshop (PTPW)

September 28, 2012, Braga, Portugal

Italian Perl workshop (IPW)

October 11-12, 2012, Bologna, Italy

OSDC France

October 12-13, 2012, Paris, France

Nordic Perl workshop (NPW)

October 13-14, 2012, Stockholm, Sweden



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