Assuming everyone reading this has a notion of what a “good” program is. In my world this would generally mean 1) the program code communicates it’s intent well to the reader, 2) the code does the right thing, and 3) it does so in an appropriately efficient manner. Meaning, if you can’t understand the code then you can’t make it correct, and long as it’s not correct, there’s not much value in making it efficient.

In my mind, this should lead to the conclusion being a good programmer probably also means being a good storyteller.

This is not a novel idea, though. Donald Knuth talked about a very similar topic a some time back. He called it “Literate Programming”, and with it, he urged programmers to go about writing software in the same way as one would go about writing literature.

I think there’s some value in this thought, but I think there’s something important missing too. To give you an idea of what, please consider the following quote:

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once.

– Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise (1938)

If we translate this into the field of computing terms, one might say write code that one only needs to read once to understand. Anyone who’s written any meaningful amount of code sees the value in an ideal like this. But with that in mind, one might also conclude that the art of journalistic writing is closer to our field than field Knuth proposed we should embrace.

Next, let me introduce you to the following opening of an article.

Mother Earth, Mother Board

In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, acquainting himself with the customs and dialects of the exotic Manhole Villagers of Thailand, the U-Turn Tunnelers of the Nile Delta, the Cable Nomads of Lan tao Island, the Slack Control Wizards of Chelmsford, the Subterranean Ex-Telegraphers of Cornwall, and other previously unknown and unchronicled folk; also, biographical sketches of the two long-dead Supreme Ninja Hacker Mage Lords of global telecommunications, and other material pertaining to the business and technology of Undersea Fiber-Optic Cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth, which should not be without interest to the readers of Wired.

– Neal Stephenson, Wired Magazine, December 1996.

At the time of it’s writing, this style might have been called long form. Ten years later, the style gets a name; creative nonfiction. And literary reportage. And literary journalism. The purpose of this style is to tell a factual story about real events and real people, while allowing yourself to use story-telling techniques and language that traditionally belongs in the realm of literature.

I think this is a fascinating concept, we can learn something from it’s ambitions.

I would like to submit to you, that – with the right language at one’s disposal – it’s possible to write programs that not just communicate their intent so well that the reader understands everything after having been read once, but also that the program is written in a way that is so engaging and fun to read that we want to read them twice.

Can the Perl 6 language community can make this happen? I wonder.

What can participants expect?

• Learn about what coding dojos and katas are all about
• Practice TDD and pair programming in a Perl 6 context
• Experience true collaborative programming
• Have fun!

Good programming requires good practice, and at a dojo we get to learn together and practice the good stuff while having fun. We learn by doing (actual practice), from repetition (what can we do better?) and from the conversations (from one another and looking back after we’re done).

Learn a new way to teach Perl 6 and good programming practices!

What are coding dojos?

Dojos are a place to practice. Coding dojos are groups of programmers getting together to practice their craft. The concept of a dojo stems from Andy Hunt’s coding kata article, which reminds us to take time off to get at what we do. For more information about dojos, see

• http://codingdojo.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WhatIsCodingDojo
• http://code.joejag.com/2009/the-coding-dojo/
• http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/code_kata_backg.html
• http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~gpollice/Dojo.html

…or just join us at the Perl 6 Patterns Hackathon! (Remember to sign up!)

The first session will last for about an hour, including a short introduction to get us started. Further sessions will last an hour or as long as the participants want to. We’ll aim to spend the first session on getting to know the tools and the format, and then use the subsequent ones to improve on this.

Hope to see you there!

- Geir Amdal
- Salve J. Nilsen

Typisk hjerne etter et Damian-foredrag

Oslo Perl Mongers ønsker å invitere til åpent medlemsmøte med Open Source legenden Damian Conway! Foredragene hans er sykt morsomme og minneverdige (bare spør de som var på “Fun With Dead Languages” foredraget i høst) så dette blir dritkult!

Tittel:

Temporally Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming In Multiple Topologically Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Spacetimes… Made Easy!

Tid:

Torsdag 19. April 2012, klokken 18:00

Sted:

The Scotsman (2. etg), Karl Johans gate 17

Kart:

http://scotsman.no/kontakt.php

Foredraget er gratis og åpent for alle.

Damian beskriver foredraget sitt på følgende vis:

Watch in terror as Damian writes a Perl program to extract square roots using nothing but quantum mechanics, general relativity, and the very fabric of the space-time continuum.

Along the way we’ll also investigate: Witt genstein’s dark secret; the diminishing returns of physical computation; Roman philosophy; when Super Science Adventures go wrong; the greatest Lego kit of all time; the secret identity of Sith; carbon logic vs silicon logic; the giants of 1930′s physics; elementary spin-half quanta under relativistic motion; CAT scans; Will Smith; bongos; drunken bets involving penguins; algorithmic consistency; God’s dice and the problem of free will; intrinsic self-inconsistency; the many worlds outside Copenhagen; and the inventor of stage diving.

What happens when Dirac meets Deutsch meets Damian? Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

http://damian.conway.org/Seminars/Quaquaversal.html

Om Damian Conway:

Damian Conway is a well-known member of the international Open Source community. An entertaining and widely sought-after speaker and educator, he is the author of several technical books, as well as over 50 Open Source software modules. He runs an international IT training company – Thoughtstream – which provides developer training from beginner to masterclass level throughout Europe, North America, and Australasia.

http://damian.conway.org/About_us/Bio_formal.html

Om Oslo Perl Mongers:

Oslo.pm er den eneste uavhengige faglig-sosiale foreningen for folk på østlandet som vil holde seg oppdatert på Perl, CPAN samt miljøene og infrastrukturen tilknyttet disse teknologiene. Foreningen er basert i Oslo, ble stiftet i 2002, har ca. 160 medlemmer og avholder faste medlemsmøter første onsdag hver måned.

http://oslo.pm/

Dette blir bra!

1. Do something cool
2. Tell about it

Damian Conway is coming to Oslo, and just like last August, Oslo.pm and Redpill Linpro will be organizing courses!

Place:

Redpill Linpro’s classrooms at Vitaminveien 1A, Oslo, Norway.

Time:

Wednesday April 18th: 09:00-16:30, Test-Driven Development in Perl (Register).

Thursday April 19th: 09:00-16:30, The Productive Programmer (Register).

Friday April 20th: 09:00-16:30, API Design for Perl (Register).

There are 12 seats available each day, so don’t wait too long to sign up. Also, a portion of the profits will go to fund Oslo.pm’s other activities in 2012.

Looking forward to see Damian in action again!

You’re hereby invited to Oslo Perl Monger’s first hackathon in 2012!

Topic:

Perl 6 Patterns

Venue:

Redpill Linpro‘s classrooms
Vitaminveien 1A
Oslo, Norway

When:

Friday April 20th to Sunday April 22nd 2012

Activities:

Hacking on Perl 6-related things, socializing, fun

Participation:

Free!

We’ve got attendance confirmation from Patrick Michaud, Moritz Lenz, Carl Mäsak, Jonathan Worthington, Damian Conway, Tadeusz Sośnierz and Filip Sergot, and there’s room for you too!

Oslo Perl Mongers’ organizers are Jan Ingvoldstad (frettled), Karl Rune Nilsen (krunen) and Salve J. Nilsen (sjn), and we can all be reached on #perl6 on irc.freenode.org.

What does one do at a hackathon? The short answer is * . The long answer: Whatever is necessary, interesting, fun or useful to do when you get an opportunity to work with someone in the same room as yourself. It’s useful to have some opportunities to handle issues that require high-bandwidth communication, and hackathons are one of those. You’ll also get opportunities to meet core Perl 6 hackers and learn or improve your knowledge of the language.

As for the topic, it’s a guideline. We as organizers would like to see more people hack on Perl 6-related projects, and have realized that it would be useful to spend some attention on making it easier to recruit new people. This might mean we spend some time making cool examples to use in promotional material, to look for patterns in the language that can be used to make it easier to teach Perl 6, or to create the words and images that let people recognize we have something utterly cool going on in the Perl 6 community.

We want Perl 6 to be understandable and easily teachable to both students and experienced developers and teachers. We’d love to spend some time improving this aspect of the language.

If you’d like to participate, get in touch with the organizers (above) or just show up!

And failing that, remember: Do something cool, and tell about it!

Too keep up-to-date with the preparations, check out our status gist on github.

Finally, we’d like to thank our sponsors: Jan Ingvoldstad, NUUG Foundation and Oslo Perl Mongers. If you’d like to help improve this event, please get in touch with us!

See you in Oslo!

Kind regards,

• Jan Ingvoldstad (frettled)
• Karl Rune Nilsen (krunen)
• Salve J. Nilsen (sjn)

So, what cool stuff is Oslo Perl Mongers planning to do in 2012?

In February, we’ll visit Telenor – Norway’s largest telecom company, to learn how they’re using Perl to manage half a million routers in Telenor’s network. We’ll also have our general assembly, so this it’s a great time to show give a hand.

In April, Damian Conway will visit us again! He’ll be teaching a couple of his courses, give a presentation for us, and attend the Go Open 2012 conference.

While Damian’s in town we’ll also organize a Perl 6 Hackathon in the Redpill Linpro offices. Invitations have been sent to several core members of the Perl 6 community, and we’re looking for sponsors who would like to help some of them coming to Oslo. (If you haven’t heard from me, check in with sjn on #perl6, and we’ll see what we can do!)

Preikestolen (The Pulpit)

In August, we’ll take a trip to YAPC::EU in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Right after YAPC::EU, we’ll fly directly from Frankfurt to Stavanger for a 5 day Moving to Moose hackathon near Lysefjorden, including a trip to Preikestolen (“The Pulpit”). Some details are still pending, but if you’re interested in working on moving Perl 5 to Moose, or move some useful CPAN modules to Moose, then this event may be something for you. On another note – we need sponsors! If your company uses Moose, please consider helping with funding for this hackathon!

In October, we’ll have our 10th anniversary! No plans yet, but we know the date is October 16th.

Now I have to remind myself (and you) that these are plans, and subject to change. But at least you can get a picture of what we’d like to do. If you want to join in, you know where to find Oslo.pm!

One thing worth keeping in mind is that Oslo.pm has always been a small group of die-hards, impervious to the changing trends of programming languages. Stubborn geeks that insist there’s a future within the Perl community, and try to “make stuff happen” despite countless reasons to do something cooler, more important or more fun. This has shaped much of what we’ve managed to do and what we haven’t done.

In the last nine-and-a-half years, we managed to meet up the first Wednesday (or Tuesday) of almost every month. Usually this has involved beer, often there’s been discussions about computer nerdy stuff, and sometimes there’s been a presentation or a conference or a trip to YAPC (Yet Another Perl Conference). I think it’s safe to claim that we’ve managed to build a good community for everyone who enjoys learning new stuff in a social setting.

But looking back at this, I have to admit there must have been some kind of brain damage or madness that must have kept those Oslo.pm die-hards going. Either that, or some hidden unknown secret that no-one knew about kept them going despite dwindling usage stats, despite quips from the kids that decided Python or Ruby was “TEH BEST EVAR!!1!”, and despite the unwholesome baggage from the 90′s and early 00′s (Matt’s Script Archive being the dirty example worth mentioning first.) Add “real life” to this, and it becomes obvious that Making Stuff Happen often can be very difficult. So, what kept those old crooks going? Was there a hidden unknown secret that no-one knew about, or had they just lost their marbles?

Before getting into that, it may be useful to take a closer look at what happened in Oslo.pm last year. 2011 was a year that brought many good things.

2011 highlights

Carl Mäsak showing off Perl 6

In March, we took part in the Communities in Action event in Oslo. The event concept was simple – Gather a bunch of meetup groups, and let them organize their regular meeting at the same venue. More than 500 people dropped by to check out the different meetings, and I’m quite happy to say that Oslo.pm got to be part of one of the cooler ones – a Code Kata where we got to see four people implement Minesweeper in Ruby, Java, Javascript and Perl 6. Carl Mäsak had come to help us with it, and it was truly an enjoyment to see him show off the cool stuff Rakudo could do. And when Carl started saying “I think we can make this code a bit shorter” and then time and time again show off idiomatic Perl 6… I loved it, and so did the rest of the crowd.

We

In June, Karl Rune, Karl and Salve went on a Perl cruise. We sailed from Oslo to the Nordic Perl Workshop in Malmö, Sweden. In three days we experienced most of the things that make sailing fun – quiet night time sailing; several hours of high-speed sailing with a strong breeze from the side; relaxing in the sunshine while sailing through the Swedish skärgård; rough puke-inducing seas between Malmö and Copenhagen. We had a great time, with great food, great sailing and great discussions. Also thanks to Copenhagen Perl Mongers for setting up an emergency social meetup just for us!

In August we got a visit from Damian Conway. We’ve tried to get him to visit Norway for many years, but when he suddenly found time we jumped right into action. He gave his wonderful talk about Fun with Dead Languages, exposing a whole new crowd of students and hackers to the “Mad Professor” of Perl.

Damian also held two of his courses for people in the Oslo Perl community. He told us about Modern Perls and of Perl Best Practices, and we managed to sell more than 40 seats to the two courses. Out of this, Oslo.pm got wonderful feedback, a bunch of new Perl programmers in the community, and 25% of the profits. I think we can comfortably claim the event was a success.

If you

Right afterwards, several of us went to YAPC::EU in Riga, and were blown away by the venue, the tracks and the smooth organization. In Riga, we also managed to reach a huge milestone in the life of Oslo Perl Mongers – for the first time, Oslo.pm could donate a significant sum of money, and this time we gave €1000 to the Perl Foundation. That’s a pretty hefty sum for a tiny outfit like Oslo.pm.

Oslo.pm social meetup, after JavaZone

In September, Oslo Perl Mongers had a stand at the CommunityZone booth at JavaZone 2011. We gave away some of the marketing material that Mark Keating made (he even updated it in a hurry just for us!), and just hanged out talking with the Java crowd about the merits of Perl, Ruby, Scala, Clojure and much else. We also got some good exposure to the other socio-topical (meetup) groups in Oslo, and showed that even if we’re one of the smaller ones we can get things done. After JavaZone, we had our regular monthly meeting.

In October, we visited Opera Software and got a good discussion about the merits of and difficulties with Mojolicious, a look at Bron Gondwana’s cunning module for streaming tar files. Afterwards, we started brainstorming Oslo.pm’s main event for 2012. More on this in a later blogpost.

In November, we visited Startsiden, where Andreas Marienborg gave us a nice introduction to their (quite impressive) application build system. They have something really cool going on there, and I hope they manage to release it under an Open Source license sometime soon.

In December, we got the oslo.pm domain, when the .pm top-level domain was opened by AFNIC. Currently the domain just redirects to our main site. Maybe we’ll do something more later. We also had a very enjoyable Christmas dinner together with the Oslo Linux User Group – something definitely worth repeating next year.

Other activities in 2011

In June, we had an extraordinary yearly meeting, were Martin Tostrup Setek came in to replace Kirill Miazine, and Karl Rune Nilsen stepped up to join the board again.

Otherwise, we spent a lot of time at the Schouskjelleren microbrewery, enjoying their wonderful beers. Good times!

What secret?

I’m quite pleased with the stuff we did in 2011. But there was quite a bit of work behind it all; and when this happened during off hours and on a volunteer basis, then motivation (or brain damage, or hidden unknown secrets that no-one knows about, as the case may be) becomes an issue. How we got this far is still difficult for me to grok, but if you really want to know, I think we can figure this out over a couple of beers. You’re buying!

But if you’re reading this while you’re organizing your own Perl Mongers group, or want to organize something completely different, then I hope you can make use of Oslo.pm’s current “secret plan”:

1. Do something cool
2. Tell about it

And that’s it. That’s what we tried to do in 2011, and that’s what  we’ll aim for in 2012. Stick around for my next post about Oslo Perl Monger’s plans for our 10th year alive – and I think it will be the best one ever!

The *.pm top level domain was only available to residents and organizations in EU and Switzerland. I was quite distraught to find out that Oslo wasn’t a Swiss city, somuch I almost gave up in despair! Luckily, I’m not prone to let facts of geography get in my way, and tried to register anyway. As one would expect, GANDI.net dismissed my advances in a polite yet firm manner.

Before this rejection, I noticed the wording of the registration form, and just a few days ago I found out that they had changed the requirements. Suddenly anyone in the European Economic Area could register! And as everyone obviously knows, Norway is part of the EEA through EFTA. You can only imagine the joy that overwhelmed me. Oslo Perl Mongers might still get it’s oslo.pm domain!

I went back to register anew, and saw that I was allowed to fill in a new form with all kinds of details about Oslo.pm. I was very happy, it felt like it was almost Christmas – until I discovered that I had to somehow prove Oslo Perl Mongers was a real organization, and that we in some way had a legitimate claim to the Oslo.pm name.

GANDI.net’s registration form offered plenty of business registers one could claim membership of. I had heard of none of them, so things were looking bad. The only half-sane alternative was to check out the one register that wasn’t obviously French – the Dun & Bradstreet D-U-N-S number.

D&B claims «A D&B D-U-N-S® number gives you credibility in the marketplace and can have a positive impact on your bottom line.» And when I found out that D-U-N-S really meant Data Universal Numbering System (truly a name concocted by marketers) I got the feeling that this was going to be expensive. Did I really have to register at some USAnian Pay-Us-And-We’ll-Give-You-Credibility scheme, just to get a French domain name?

First step was to find out if Oslo.pm already was registered. A quick search in their company search (found on their front page) yielded a positive hit. The result page also offered a link where they could send me an email with the D-U-N-S number.

Progress!

Until I found that to get this mail one has to be a registered customer, and that only USAnian and Canadian companies were allowed to register.

Generic curses! Foiled again!

Luckily, The Great Book of Knowledge offered a sliver of hope. There is a sneaky way of finding a (US only) D-U-N-S number – could those instructions also work for companies outside USAnia? As it happens, yes. It worked quite well, and the proof in the pudding can be found by searching for the D-U-N-S number on the Advanced Search page.

Problem solved, and today we know that Oslo Perl Mongers both has «credibility in the marketplace», that the Oslo.pm domain registration was successful, and better still: the oslo.pm domain actually works right now.

Success! \o/

Han er kjent i Perl-miljøet som “the Mad Scientist of Perl” og har gjennom ti år klart å fylle konferanse-saler, keynotes og forelesninger med syke, hysteriske morsomme og utrolige fascinerende idéer.

Nå kommer han til Norge, og foredraget han vil holde for oss heter…

Fun with dead languages

Watch in mesmerized terror as Damian hacks code in five unrelated languages (none of them Perl). Along the way, you’ll also learn about modern archaeological techniques, bidirectional cross-dressing, Ancient Greeks hackers, improbable romances, the real Club Med, why programmers shouldn’t frequent casinos, the language of moisture vaporators, C++ mysticism, conversational Latin, state machines on steroids, feeding the dog the old-fashioned way, the shocking truth about anime, programming without variables or subroutines, the Four Voids of the Apocalypse, Microsoft’s new advertising campaign, what the Romans used instead of braces, drunken stonemasons, the ancient probabilistic wisdom of bodkins, how to kill a language with a single byte, and the price of fish.

Foredraget er gratis og åpent for alle.

Sted: Store auditorium, Informatikkbygget (Ifi1, Kristen Nygaards hus), UiO, Blindern
Tid: Torsdag 11. August, kl. 18:15

Oslo Perl Mongers (Oslo.pm) er en faglig-sosial forening åpen for alle som ønsker å lære om og vedlikeholde kunnskapene sine i programmerings- språket Perl. Vi møter første onsdag hver måned, og organiserer jevnlig fagøl, hackathons, konferanser og foredrag. Medlemskap er gratis, og instruksjoner for innmelding finnes på oslo.pm.org.

Takk til Institutt for informatikk og USIT for hjelpen med å få til dette.

Velkommen!

mvh,

- Salve J. Nilsen (Leder Oslo.pm)
- Martin Setek (USIT, styremedlem Oslo.pm)

Oppdatering: Heng opp denne plakaten om arrangementet!