Hi ILUG'ers,
I wanted to put out a public thanks for all of you who attended the Perl
Programming sessions on Saturday and Sunday. We'll be continuing with them
this coming Sat/Sun (15,16 March).
Perl is a difficult language to teach due to its raw power. It can be used
for everything from writing an Operating System (
http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol5_2/tpj0502-0009.html) to writing
simple web pages to writing extremely complex and rich web-enabled
application frameworks. It is, as Girish pointed out, the duct-tape
language. We found out on Saturday that "duct-tape" does not translate well
to the Indian idioma. So let's call it the Fevicol-and-rope language (coz I
can't think of a good equivalent to duct-tape here!).
Need to build a house? All you need is a large enough vat of fevicol and
some rope.
Need to build a massive application that's web-enabled, runs on any
operating system, and can be hacked together in a weekend? Use Perl.
To try to teach Perl to an audience of C-programmers, students, general
computer users, and those with even a peripheral interest, all at the same
time, was ambitious and yet I think everyone benefited.
Girish has been a great instructor, and took a lot of feedback (and some
pretty vocal criticism) on Saturday and Sunday about how he had framed the
classes, and what he was trying to accomplish. I would like to thank Girish
in public for the work he has done for this presentation, and also his
graciousness in adapting his presentation to the needs of the audience.
Sunday was, by all accounts, a more educational and perl-focused session
than Saturday.
And I'm *really* looking forward to next weekend's sessions since Girish is
planning on making them even more interactive and interesting.
See all you Perl-hackers next Saturday and Sunday.
enjoy
