After more than six months, and more than a few technical hurdles, NYTProf v3 has been released at last.
In this post I’ll review the major changes and significant new features. (more…)
December 24, 2009
December 13, 2009
“Help Saving MySQL!”
Michael “Monty” Widenius, the creator of MySQL, has asked me, among many others, to help spread the word about an imminent decision by the European Commission on the Oracle merger with Sun.
Why should you care? Monty’s view, along with others, is that Oracle has much more to gain from neglecting MySQL than it has to gain from enhancing it.
Why should you act now? It seems that “Oracle has instead contacted hundreds of their big customers and asked them to write to the EC and require unconditional acceptance of the deal.” To balance this the European Commission needs to hear voices from the other side of the story. The European Commission is due to make a decision in just a couple of weeks.
What should you do? Read Monty’s post and act on it, if you so choose.
October 5, 2009
Wishlist of PL/Perl Enhancements for PostgreSQL 8.5
I’m working with PostgreSQL for my day job, and liking it.
We’re fairly heavy users of stored procedures implemented in PL/Perl, with ~10,000 lines in ~100 functions (some of which have bloated to painful proportions). This creates some interesting issues and challenges for us.
There’s a window of opportunity now to make improvements to PL/Perl for PostgreSQL 8.5. I’m planning to work with Andrew Dunstan to agree on a set of changes and develop the patches.
As a first step along that road I want to map out here the changes I’m thinking of and to ask for comments and suggestions.
October 4, 2009
The Voyage
We saw Johnny Duhan in a very small, intimate, concert in Ennis last year. Last weekend we saw Christy Moore in concert in Limerick. This song, written by Johnny Duhan and sung by Christy Moore, has always struck a cord with me.
I am a sailor, you’re my first mate
We signed on together, we coupled our fate
Hauled up our anchor, determined not to fail
For the hearts treasure, together we set sailWith no maps to guide us we steered our own course
Rode out the storms when the winds were gale force
Sat out the doldrums in patience and hope
Working together we learned how to copeChorus:
Life is an ocean and love is a boat
In troubled water that keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage, there was just me and you
Now gathered round us, we have our own crewTogether we’re in this relationship
We built it with care to last the whole trip
Our true destination’s not marked on any charts
We’re navigating to the shores of the heartChorus 2x
– Johnny Duhan
Here’s a video of Christy Moore and Johnny Duhan talking about the song and singing it together.
September 22, 2009
September 10, 2009
Perl in five sentences
I just added a concluding slide to my updated Perl Myths talk. Having comprehensively debunked some myths with hard facts about perl and its ecosystem, I wanted to end with a slide that summarized some truths.
I liked the slide text so much I wanted to share it with you:
Perl:
has a massive library of reusable code
has a culture of best practice and testing
has a happy welcoming growing community
has a great future in Perl 5 and Perl 6
is a great language for getting your job done
for the last 20 years, and the next 20!
It would make more sense after seeing the talk, but I think it stands well on its own as a summary of Perl.
September 4, 2009
Is your Perl community visible?
As I mentioned recently, I’m working on an update to my Perl Myths talk. (Which is really a review of the state of the art, state of the community, resources, and best practices. You could even call it marketing.)
In recent months, and especially while researching for this update, it’s become clear to me that the Perl community is both functioning well and growing more conscious of its own role and value.
But are the various components of “the community” sufficiently visible? (more…)
August 31, 2009
Can you help me generate an alpha channel gradient image?
Here’s an extract from a treemap generated by the perl Devel::NYTProf profiler:
Notice the shading on the boxes? (more…)
August 13, 2009
Help me update my Perl Myths talk for 2009
I’m going to be speaking at the OSS BarCamp in Dublin in September. Given the likely audience I think my Perl Myths talk would be a good fit.
It needs updating though, and that’s where you can help… (more…)
My professional profile
