Perl Weekly newsletter

#44 - Strawberry Perl 5.16.0.1 released

Hi,

Apparently the e-mail sending of the Perl Weekly still has some issues as the number of clicks last week was still a lot lower than a month ago. This time I've removed the links to Twitter, Facebook and Google+ as I have not seen a lot of people using them. We'll see if this fixes the problem.

In any case, I'd like to make sure the articles in the Perl Weekly get a wide-spread coverage. So when you read an article, please invest the extra 10 seconds to Tweet about it or post it on Google+. If you added 'seen on the +Perl Weekly' or 'via @perlweekly' that would be extra awesome, but even just by further distributing the articles you do a lot for the Perl community.

See you next week!

Strawberry Perl 5.16.0.1 released

Just a few days after the official release of perl 5.16, kmx has managed to build and release the newest version of Strawberry Perl for Windows. This is really good. Much better than what happened with 5.14. If time permits I hope soon to build the next release of DWIM Perl on to of this release.

Security vulnerabilities in RT

Best Practical has addressed several security issues and has released two new versions of RT. I hope the RT instance used on CPAN has been upgraded too.

Dancer + Bootstrap + Font-Awesome

Assaf Gordon created a nice look of a Dancer based web site using the Bootstrap library. See the blog of Sawyer for the links.

London Perl Workshop 2012 Announcements and Proclamations

This year, LPW will be on 24th November. The web site is live. You can start to sign up, submit talks and send sponsors.

Next DBD::SQLite to be released in early June

While Adam Kennedy has stopped writing Perl code for a living he still does some Perl development for fun. This release will include some substantial changes and if you are a DBD::SQLite user then before upgrading you'd better make sure the changes are OK with you.

The Current Sub in Perl 5.16

If you were wondering what's new in Perl 5.16 then the example chromatic gives can show you one the few user visible changes of this new version and how to use it.

the perl 5.16.0 epigraph

A few days after releasing the latest version of Perl, Ricardo Signes (rjbs) goes on explaining the quote he used in the release announcement. A quote from a poem by W.H. Auden.

What Moose is doing to my nose

A motivational article on how using Moose changes not only the way how one writes code but also how one reads code and what is considered code smell.

What Are Transclusions? How to Use Them in TWiki Applications

These are basically parameterized include statements in the templating language or in this case in the mark up language used by Twiki.

A Brief Introduction to Input Validation

Though I would use strict even in such small code snippets I think the example of Christopher Frenz on white-listing and black listing can be a good a good explanation.

Cheap caching with AutoDestruct

Chris Weyl describes how the AutoDestruct Moose attribute can help you set an expiration date on values of a class. Perfect for making the attributes work as a cache with limited life-time.

Sqitch Update: The Plan

David Wheeler continues the development of Squitch. This time he is debating the way the needs to generate the deploy plan. Should it be generated from the individual git commits or from the labeled git commit or maybe written manually?

Toward Coding Without Conditionals

chromatic wants to write boring code. He has several reasons but he sums it up with 'Boring code gets out of your way.' For that he wants to replace Conditionals by Polymorphism.

Usability testing of CPAN modules

Vyacheslav Matjukhin picked up a module Validation::Class and provided his brain dump for what he understand and more importantly what he does not understand from the documentation. In this case he got very good response from the author - maybe because the author asked for his feedback? - and many of the problems and incorrect assumptions were fixed. I agree with the comments that we need more such interaction to improve our code and our documentation!

Alien::Base Perl Foundation Grant Report Month 3

As Joel Berger reports the obstacles he faces on OSX help comes quickly both on and off the blog. I think it just shows how important it is to ask question on public forums (or blogs in this case). There are always people around who might be able to help. Even if you are the expert on the subject.

Moonfruit Acquired by Yell

For several years now Perl was fairly neglected by the start-up community. It seems then natural then, that the sale of a Perl Dancer based company excites the Perl community. I am quite sure we'll see more and more people starting their own companies using Perl.

Introducing Catalyst::Controller::Accessors

fREW Schmidt has a few relatively modules he is planning to describe, the first one being Catalyst::Controller::Accessors. First he shows the full version of his code using Catalyst chaining and then shows how using Catalyst::Controller::Accessors can eliminate some of code repetition, turning them into declarations.

Better Exceptions with Exception::Base

After several rounds of complaining, finally Caleb Cushing seemed to have found a pair of modules that satisfy his needs for throwing and catching exceptions in Perl. Exception::Base for throwing exceptions and Try::Tiny for catching them. In this article he show and example how to use those.

Perl Module Release: Image-Size 3.231

Randy J Ray released a new version of Image::Size and got rid of AutoLoader! Yay!

Copy Windows Event Logs into an SQLite Database

Windows has never been the favorite operating system for Perl programmers so I am happy to this article that can help a system administrator for MS Windows based systems to mine the data in the Event Logs.

Andy Lester, brian d foy, Gisle Aas, and Adrian Howard featured in RSA Animate video - The Power of Networks

I love the Animate videos of RSA. Both for their content and the presentation. In this one they even mention the Perl network of people. Thanks to Philip Durbin for pointing it out.

First Impressions - Padre the Perl IDE

Look, a post about Padre from someone who is not a Padre developer! Yet.

About ABC

Solomon Foster (colomon) has posted a whole series of articles about ABC. This one explains that it is a partial implementation of the ABC notation - the text-based music notation system and the de facto standard for folk and traditional music. In other posts he writes about error handling in ABC (I wonder if that would be avoiding false sounds?) and optimization. One thing that stands out is that opposing popular belief, this is a production system written in Perl 6. If you read this article, then check out the 'previous' and 'next' posts as well.

News in the Rakudo 2012.05 release

Moritz Lenz describes manipulation of library search path and exporting/importing of functions in the latest release of Rakudo Perl 6

Rakudo Star 2012.05 released

In case you missed the actual release announcement...

Macros progress report: quantum yak shaving

by Carl Masak

(xxx) stackoverflow perl report

Don't worry, this is just the 30th Stack Overflow report of questions tagged with Perl.

Start Planning Your YAPC Strategy

Though brian d foy wrote this for YAPC::NA, I think this is relevant for ever Perl event and even for every non-Perl event. It can be fun to just show up at the conference and go with the flow, but it might be a lot better to plan ahead. Not only picking the talks you'd like to hear but trying to figure out what other social events would you like to attend and who you would like to talk to. You can even send e-mail or contact using other means people you would like to meet.

YAPC::Asia Tokyo Facebook Page

Daisuke Maki (lestrrat) linked to the Facebook page for YAPC::Asia and recommends other event organizers to hire a professional photographer. While I have this uneasy feeling of spending money on such stuff, actually I think this is a great idea. It can certainly help bring more people to the next event and help make it easier to get sponsorships.

YAPC::NA

June 13-15, 2012, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

French Perl workshop

June 29-30, 2012, Strasbourg

YAPC::EU 2012

August 20-22, 2012, Frankfurt, Germany