Git 101 tutorial

http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2009/public/schedule/detail/7953

This was a great tutorial. It was as good of a brain dump as you could hope for in a half day session. A good mix of theory and hands on examples. This got me excited to get back to the office and push to get this adopted as soon as possible. (It's already "in the air". It just needs a nudge to get us converted over to it)

Well done!

Still Looking for the Swan in Squeak's Ugly Duckling

http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2009/public/schedule/detail/8158

So this is not exactly the tutorial I was expecting. But it's also quite possible my expectations were a little skewed.

Unfortunately Avi Bryant wasn't able to make the conference so Randal Schwartz stepped in. And no disrespect to Randal but if I had known this substitution had occurred, I would have picked a different tutorial simply because I had seen his presentation last year and was interested in a different perspective.

Partly I feel like I was expecting too much from this tutorial and part of me feels like I got something different than described.

When I read the description in the link above I don't get the sense of a remedial no-background talk. But like I said Randal took this over at the last minute for Avi so I have no complaints with him.

I think I focused a little too much on the last paragraph of the description whereas I should realize that that is what usually gets covered least at the end (or not at all):

"But we’ll also address the practical concerns that keep people away from Squeak: how to get rid of the pastel colors and bitmapped fonts so that you can stand to look at it; how to get your source code into version control so you can collaborate with others; how to find documentation and examples; how to integrate with the OS and with C libraries; how to manage deployment."

I am relatively comfortable with the ideas of smalltalk and reading it's code, just not completely sold on the language and environment. So what I was mostly looking for was the addressing of "practical concerns that keep people away from Squeak":

• how to get rid of the pastel colors and bitmapped fonts so that you can stand to look at it;
  
  • just a mention that this is possible. I would have really liked a detailed course on how to customize the ugly duckling away
  
  
• how to get your source code into version control so you can collaborate with others;
  
  • there was a pretty good description of version control and options for doing this
  
  
• how to find documentation and examples;
  
  • this was well done and is a core part of the wonder of smalltalk
  
  
• how to integrate with the OS and with C libraries;
  
  • I don't think there was any mention of this (unless I really zoned out)
  
  
• how to manage deployment.
  
  • I don't recall anything like this
  
  

But really it was a well done tutorial, just not what I was expecting. But I think
this was just a combination of over ambitious expectations and last minute teacher changes.

Here is the smalltalk course I would love to have:

• develop a real world useful app while I watch. e.g. take some unix sysadmin tasks and automate them and create a reporting system etc. ie, show me that squeak can kick python's ass at something where python excels
  
• show me how to recover when my image crashes or I've accidentally broken things
  
• show me how to customize my way from the default image to one of the premade developer images. then explain to me why these aren't already the defaults
  
• show me how to convince my bosses that I should do a trial project in smalltalk. :)
  

OSCON: Tee Hee Wii

My co-worker who also attended OSCON this year was making fun of me for putting my business card in all and every contest receptacle. But today I found that it paid off. I won a drawing for a wii.

Who's laughing now monkey boy?!

OSCON: Larry Wall is boring

I don't say this lightly. Though I currently work in python, perl was one of my first loves and I'll always have a soft spot in my heart (and head) for it. This is my 4th OSCON and the 4th time I've seen Larry give his state of the onion address. And until tonight they have always been a highlight. Don't get me wrong, they aren't as insanely clever as Damian or deliciously scholarly like r0ml, but they have a definite low key humor and fun that is contagious no matter your language.

But tonight he bored my socks off. Actually, that's not true. Looking down I do in fact seem to be wearing my socks. But he just gave a straight forward technical speech. No whimsy. No screensavers for slides. No magick (sp?) the gathering cards. Just straight technology.

It was really weird. I almost left early but I hung in until the end because I wanted to see if there would be some crazy grand finale.

But nothing.

Oh, well, maybe it's hard to be whimsical when your pet project is so far overdue.

OSCON: Python 3.0 conversion tutorial

This was actually more interesting than I was expecting. Anthony Baxter gave a full afternoon tutorial on the things that will change as we go to python 3.0 and some helpful hints on how to get there.

- Looks like python 2.7 is a pretty likely eventuality (but definitely nothing past 2.9 :)
- You can import in several features "from the future" in 2.6 to get some of the 3.0 flavor (print as a function, non-relative imports, etc).
- optional type declaration in function defs could be cool
- foo, *stuff, bar = my_list # will be awesome
- {1, 2, 3} # as explicit set constructor is handy
- lambda isn't going away (you knew that, I just like to remind you). But so long my old friend reduce... :(

I'm very interested to try out the 2to3 converter. Actually the word I want is probably scared. I think alot of my personal code will be fine but the code at work will be a bear to get converted. Well, maybe it will force more wide spread unit testing (the real goal of py3k).

In any case I left the session more interested in 3.0 and less afraid of the conversion process. But I have a feeling it will be a couple years before this happens at work.

OSCON: seaside tutorial

Randall Schwartz gave an interesting seaside tutorial on Monday. Here are the slides.

I have been through a few squeak tutorials and seaside tutorials but was interested to see the big picture presented in one shot. I enjoyed the tutorial but I have to mention a couple of things that bugged me.

- tutorial spent way too much time on the basics (of smalltalk) and not enough on the cool stuff that makes seaside completely awesome (e.g. didn't get to the last 1/4 or so of slides). This is totally understandable because I think it's expected that most people haven't messed with smalltalk before and the syntax would probably be pretty distracting on a first view. Maybe it's time to have a seaside master class.

- Randall made a comment about how other web frameworks have continuations now. He cited django as an example. Hmmm... that doesn't seem right. My best guess is that he confused ruby (which has continuations) and python. But as far as I know neither rails or django use continuations.

But in general it was well done (despite the typos ;-) and I hope to see a continued/growing seaside presence at OSCON. This is the 3rd year in a row that has had at least one presentation on seaside. Maybe we need an in depth look at dabbledb next year...

Here is a seaside tutorial I recommend.

[added: 2008-07-23]
Reading the above again, the tone seemed more negative than I intended. Just want to leave the final thought that I really enjoyed the tutorial. It was well thought out and well presented. It's just easier to focus on the little nits. :)

OSCON Haskell tutorial

I was pretty bummed to have missed the haskell tutorial this year. The one last year was so-so and you can't beat one of the designers speaking about his creation. I was delighted to discover today that the tutorial is available on-line. With a link to the handouts. Hard to beat.

Dear people at the firefox booth at OSCON

This is a fox. This is a red panda. I can imagine that these could be easily confused by the casual observer. While my daughter thinks the plush toy that I purchased at your booth is adorable, I feel it is my duty to point out that most if not all of the people who purchased these toys thought they were getting a fox. A firefox. I'm not planning to press this issue farther at this point, but I think it's important that you recognize this misleading maneuver and apologize publicly. Or send me another one for free for my son. :)

(OK, I've just learned that a firefox IS a red panda. But you have to admit that ALL firefox art work depicts a "normal" fox. But still I deserve another free firefox....)

OSCON notes

- One of the highlights for me was a panel discussion at Powell's Technical book store with some of the authors of the book "Beautiful Code". Besides just being interesting to put some names with faces it was really fun to see some famous programmers talk about code they found beautiful. It was sort of like watching people who have been given an opportunity to talk about how awesome their children are.

As a side note there was sort of a heated exchanged between the developers of svn and one of the lead developers of perl (chromatic). It some how surprisingly came down to an argument over whether lisp was beautiful and whether perl was like the only language that one could write the programming equivalent of Finnegan's Wake. And then something about getting tattoos with perl code. Etc. The content of the discussion was pretty interesting but just seeing that these were real people who don't necessarily think that you are awesome simply because you are an open source developer was a bit enlightening.

- I was very disappointed to that Damian Conway didn't speak this year. After first seeing his perl in klingon talk a few years ago, I've been hooked. Almost makes me want to rediscover my perl roots. Almost.

- On the other hand it was interesting to finally see Steve Yegge talk in person. His powerpoint slides crapped out but he gave pretty interesting talk on the importance of product positioning. Much more interesting than it sounds. And NBL is javascript2 if that wasn't already obvious.

- Giles Bowkett gave a rehash of his seaside presentation which is available from his web site. I was excited when he started the talk because he was actually up there going thru code, but then he fell back to his prepared talk. The talk was interesting, but was more marketing than reasoned argument for the wonders of seaside.

- I saw two talks by Simon Peyton Jones on parallelism and memory management using haskell. Here's a case where the personality of the person was a bit surprising to me. He was the most friendly and ebullient yet soft spoken and modest speaker I've seen so far at OSCON this year. Quite in contrast to haskell which makes me cry when I try to use it. But I keep trying.

- overcoming bias. I had recently discovered this web site (I think thru oreilly radar) so it was interesting so see one of the bloggers from there speak. I've been thinking alot lately about how you can detect biases in your self and other and how to systematically recognize and overcome them. So it it's pretty uncanny (to me) that there is a site about this and I got to see a talk on this. The universe is trying to tell me something....

- State of the Onion: Always interesting to hear Larry Wall speak. Once again I can't help to be intrigued by perl to hear it described, but I'm always a little horrified when I do. his talk was basically a tour of the features and concerns that a language designer must consider. it seems that perl 6 (if it is ever released) will be the kitchen sink of all kitchen sinks. Interestingly his talk was not given the focus it usually does and was just given in a well packed conference room rather than the central meeting area.