Guest speaker for 28 August 2008

Speaker: Randal Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting

Merlyn's shows his approval of our camel.
(Photograph courtesy of Jim Steiner.)

Title: Perl Second-Best Practices

Synopsis:

So, you don't have time to read Damian Conway's "Perl Best Practices" book, to understand his "256 guidelines on the art of coding to help you write better Perl code"? Hear Randal Schwartz provide the executive summary, including pointing out where Randal disagrees with Damian, and why. This high-speed overview will help you understand "code layout, naming conventions, choice of data and control structures, program decomposition, interface design and implementation, modularity, object orientation, error handling, testing, and debugging." But using shorter words.

Bio:

Randal L. Schwartz is a two-decade veteran of the software industry--skilled in software design, system administration, security, technical writing, and training. He has coauthored the "must-have" standards: Programming Perl, Learning Perl, Learning Perl for Win32 Systems, and Effective Perl Programming, as well as writing regular columns for WebTechniques, PerformanceComputing, SysAdmin, and Linux Magazine. He's also a frequent contributor to the Perl newsgroups and the "Perl Monastery" community, and has moderated comp.lang.perl.announce since its inception. His offbeat humor and technical mastery have reached legendary proportions worldwide (but he probably started some of those legends himself). Randal's desire to give back to the Perl community inspired him to help create and provide initial funding for The Perl Institute. He is also a founding board member of the Perl Mongers (perl.org), the worldwide Perl grassroots advocacy organization.

Since 1985, Randal has owned and operated Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. Randal develops Perl courseware, provides training to Fortune 500 companies across the United States, and trains other trainers to do likewise.