Mittwoch, 24. Juli 2002

Introducing the Perl 6 language: Larry Wall and Damian Conway introduce Perl 6 - which seems to have beed radically changed from Perl 5. Lots of new things like Exception handling - something Java geeks take for granted. Apart from that there seems to be lots of changes Perl programmers will have to get used to. It seems as though Perl has a very strong following here as the presentation was packed.. I think I would be pretty bummed if someone changed the language I had been using so radically this way. But when it comes to Perl - that seems to be different. I am sure it would not be possible to change Java this way - without a revolution.

1st. Book sold!: Daneil Proudfoot - someone I met during one of the lunch breaks has just bought the first book. And I signed it for him. I also met Stephanie Wall and Elise Walters our editors from New Riders.

Keynote: RMS - The Free Software Movement: Where All This Started From. Richard will have nothing to do with "open source". He says he is an activist in the free software movement.

Keynote: Lawrence Lessig - Freeing culture. Never have so few controlled so much. Anything you do on the computer is a proces of "copying" and therefore regulated. There is no "fair use" when it comes to the Internet and coputers. How is increasing copyright killing off culture. A lot of this is specific to America and their laws etc. But what is the situation on Europe? Aaron is blogging this in detail..

Good morning from San Diego. Ran into Sam Ruby in the hallway this morning and had breakfast with him. On my way out to the tent I popped into the room where New Riders have their booth - and guess what....I have seen the book! So it exists! Go buy it :-).

Dinner with Andy Oran. He is an editor with O'Reilly. Talked a bit about the conference and writing books. And he said he would come to my presentation (maybe). Then we had a few beers and are now sitting in Larry Wall's State of the Onion Address

Geekchalking. It's hard to tell the geek just by the name tag - so this is where Geekchalking comes into play. Instead of everyone wearing different T-Shirts such as "Perl rocks" "Perl rockx" etc. - we define standard symbols you have to wear on your shirt. To symbolize your level of geekdom. And if you're not wearing the correct T-Shirt then we will chalk the correct symbol onto it. And here is a link to the Geekchalking site we created here.

Steve and I are lounging in the hall and "geek watching". Read there for more. I came up with "Geekchalking". We're working on it.

Cocoon Book available: According to the New Riders Web site, the book is now in stock there - so it should be on Amazon soon. Also - you will find a sample chapter from the book here. I'm currently not subscribed to the Cocoon mailing-lists - so can someone post the information there - thanks!