Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 12:56:37PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Try doing Java in Lynx. Or Mosaic. Is there even a plugin for Netscape 3.0? Lynx Mosaic practically don't exist, demographically speaking. I'd say that's marketing and not something built-in. You want client-side Perl, you have ActiveState's PerlScript. What, nobody has a client for it? Well, lack of marketing. Or lack of out-of-the-box installation. I think there was even a Tcl plugin for Netscape that nobody used. Probably not because of merit or lack thereof, but just because it wasn't hyped enough, and/or didn't ship as standard with a major browser. Because Tcl is shit, shurely. In any case, the point is there is lots of stuff Java can do Perl can't, for practical, ease of use -centric values of "can't". Paul
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Robin Szemeti wrote: IMHO to be of any use certification needs to be HUGE .. eg we need O'Reilly AND Manning behind it or it simply won't fly. We could write a very comprehensive set of tests and assesment levels, do all that. The theory driving test in this country was doen by getting driving instructors/examiners to send in questiosn and then they assesed them and stuck them in the question pool. Perhaps something like that might be in order - get peeps to send in questions and then get 'editors' to grade them from 0 (silly/rejected) to 5 (damnably hard Deep Perl Wizadry).
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 01:03:14AM -0800, Paul Makepeace wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 12:56:37PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Try doing Java in Lynx. Or Mosaic. Is there even a plugin for Netscape 3.0? Lynx Mosaic practically don't exist, demographically speaking. But things like Avantgo - which are getting more and more users all the time - have pretty much the same capabilities as a text-only browser. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/ This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine. ** I read encrypted mail first, so encrypt if your message is important **
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 10:33:59AM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Robert Shiels ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Have you thought about charging structures, SAP charge about 300gbp to take a certification exam, and they offer courses that are specifically designed i had thought about a 20 quid fee to be sent to YAS I think (although I'm not sure) Greg sees the plan working the same way as I do: we (the various trainers involved) provide training courses at our usual rates which *prepare* the student to take an exam for a nominal fee to gain accreditation. (ie, training courses don't include or substitute for the exam.) yip and you build in, a little 10 or 20 quid donation to YAS for everyone done, however this would probably be voluntary or some such - i dont really know. but if you are doing a training course that cost 500+ to attend, 10 or 20 seems reasonable. but as i said , i really dont know yet. -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 01:03:14AM -0800, Paul Makepeace wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 12:56:37PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Try doing Java in Lynx. Or Mosaic. Is there even a plugin for Netscape 3.0? Lynx Mosaic practically don't exist, demographically speaking. Bzzzt! Lynx doesn't exist *in*the*logs* because a Lynx user d/loads one page sees that the company is basically saying "FUCK OFF I DON'T WANT YOUR BUSINESS" and never comes back. Whereas Nescape/IE d/loads 500 separate line segments, icons, title-bars, tool-bars, spinning logos and other crap and instantly become "demographic-leaders". Mmmm, I think I better chill-out a bit. -- Chris Benson -- Lynx user when I can, Netscape for the crap.
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 09:13:16PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: yip and you build in, a little 10 or 20 quid donation to YAS for everyone done, however this would probably be voluntary or some such - i dont really know. but if you are doing a training course that cost 500+ to attend, 10 or 20 seems reasonable. I like that. "10% of the fees from this course will be donated to Yet Another Society." Hmph. I s'pose I'd better join Yet Another Mailing List. :) -- "Darkly hinting of head hitting desk" -- Megahal (trained on asr), 1998-11-05
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 11:50:57AM +0100, David Cantrell wrote: But things like Avantgo - which are getting more and more users all the time - have pretty much the same capabilities as a text-only browser. From a display point of view, yes, but they certainly have the capability to run a JVM (J2ME -- micro edition). Right now there isn't much call for it but there will be (IMO) with wireless services. Paul
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:08:00PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote: is it? ... sure you don't mean 'the database used by most large corporates for e-commerce' ? I know nothing about the spread of spend between the large coprporations and the small 5 dollar outfits .. but theres a hell of a lot of small guys out there, running MySQL and postgres ... maybe in spend oracle wins, but in sheer numbers of transaction the other 2 proabably have the upper hand Foul! You mentioned MySQL and transactions together. :-) -Dom (and no, layering db3 underneath doesn't count)
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
i am a little unclear what the benefits of this exercise might be without a brand or larger player backing it up. if we could hook up with someone like learning tree (eg they can claim to deliver courses to "PCSE" standards) this might be a big winner. alex ps i only mention learning tree because they're a company people know of OUTSIDE the Perl community. ps2 PCSE - Perl Certified Software Engineer? lack of imagination? I'd suggest that it is a reasonable working assumption that both NetThink, Iterative and other Perl Consultancies/Trainers want to make money. I'd also state the assumption that if proposed to the wider Perl community - Perl certification would go back into argument state, so I suggest (with Dave Cross' blessing), that we form the London.pm certification. NetThink and Iterative will sign up to teach to a given level of skills (or several levels). This process _has_ to be open and should have a deadline. If we can get something that helps london / south england and/or the UK then we can achieve something. I'd advise getting some non-trainers involved as well, perhaps Blackstar and other Perl businesses? (their hook will be that they become partners and get logo placement in whatever pseudo forum/organisation does this) I realise this action and the attitude may not be popular on the wider stage, but ho hum. Thoughts? If Simon (NetThink), Piers/Leon (Iterative), Dave Cross (with his london.pm hat on) and a couple of companies that use Perl say this is a good idea, i think we can do this. Greg -- alex nunes | t 020 7603 5723 | f 020 7603 2504 director | read the NEW story @ http://codix.net/ codix.net | 107 shepherd's bush road, london w6 7lp
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* alex ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: i am a little unclear what the benefits of this exercise might be without a brand or larger player backing it up. if we could hook up with someone like learning tree (eg they can claim to deliver courses to "PCSE" standards) this might be a big winner. Well i was hoping on getting an initial commitment of people to sign up to it from the list, they would effectively join some `forum' under YAS, they would sign up to some fairly trivial commitments (e.g. employers would `recognise' the qualification). Then we'd figure out the first 3 skill areas. This would leave us with some content and a body. At this point hopefully people could take the test and we could then move on to evangelise it with people like learning tree. The important thing from my POV is that its not learning tree from day one, as they will simply want to say - taking learning tree course Perl101 means people get core competency and it would become the usual noddy thing. Involving them later when the forum was established would give them slightly less clout. This is of course, imho. Greg -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 08:56:36AM +0100, James Powell wrote: Course, mysql does support transactions now... I believe with two different types of table for some reason. It's because the underlying table type is implemented using Berkeley DB3, which does support transactions. And that has several modes of operation, hash, btree and recno. I haven't looked into it, but I would imagine that it makes transactions across different tables kind of tricky. In fact, I'd class it as a bit of a hack. But don't take my opinion for it, because this is all based on 2nd hand evidence. -Dom
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Robin Szemeti wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, you wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:10:00PM +0100, Aaron Trevena wrote: Plain and simply I don't think java is the right technology for e-commerce, plain and simple. gartuitous snippage no .. it _does_ have its strong points .. I wouldn't have even bought a book if i thought it was really bad .. but it just seems to make some things so hard to do. Mybe its just me being crap. I'd be intrested to set a good perl programmer and a Java guy head to head .. get em to build an app to the same spec and see how long they took, and then get them to extend it in some way and time that .. I once read a report (18 months ago) where the same projects where given to lots of programmers, the usualy results were show i.e algorythm design was the most important factor, although on the whole scripting langauges were faster to develope in, and had faster execuion speeds and lower memory footprints. I should try and find it again as I've lost the URL. Greg don't get me wrong .. I'm not just Java bashing .. but really, the hype it gets would have you believe its all tings to all men .. in reallity its got good points, but some big holes too ... -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 03:55:57AM -0500, Dave Cross wrote: At Thu, 29 Mar 2001 09:51:46 +0100 (BST), alex [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ps2 PCSE - Perl Certified Software Engineer? lack of imagination? Shouldn't that be CPH for "Certified Perl Hacker" or is that missing the point? Certified Perl Regular would be far more amusing. "Dammit, get me a CPR!" -Dom
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
depends what you want from the exercise - if you are a perl shop and want to know how good applicants are then, yes, CPH (but if you're a perl shop you can pretty quickly determine how good people are anyway). so, i can't really see the point in this. i think it should sound like a professional certification a la MCSE simply to address corporate criticisms that this is a hackers only language with no certification. i think the whole initiative should be more about making Perl be taken more seriously OUTSIDE the community. alex Shouldn't that be CPH for "Certified Perl Hacker" or is that missing the point? Dave... -- alex nunes | t 020 7603 5723 | f 020 7603 2504 director | read the NEW story @ http://codix.net/ codix.net | 107 shepherd's bush road, london w6 7lp
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Dave Cross wrote: At Thu, 29 Mar 2001 09:51:46 +0100 (BST), alex [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i am a little unclear what the benefits of this exercise might be without a brand or larger player backing it up. if we could hook up with someone like learning tree (eg they can claim to deliver courses to "PCSE" standards) this might be a big winner. It's a fair point. But do Learning Tree have a good reputation in the marketplace? I'm not sure they do. I categorically refused yesterday to allow any of out people to be sent on a Learning Tree Perl course ... /J\
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: The important thing from my POV is that its not learning tree from day one, as they will simply want to say - taking learning tree course Perl101 means people get core competency and it would become the usual noddy thing. Involving them later when the forum was established would give them slightly less clout. Absolutely right. To bring Learning Tree (or any other Commercial Training House ) would mean we would prbably be compelled to go along with what they already teach - which may or may not be any good as far as we are concerned - after all they have a whole bunch invested in training materials and existing trainers which they are not going to give up easily ... Possibly a first step would be to work out how to certify the certifiers as it were ... /J\
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 09:59:35AM +0100, Dominic Mitchell wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 08:56:36AM +0100, James Powell wrote: Course, mysql does support transactions now... I believe with two different types of table for some reason. It's because the underlying table type is implemented using Berkeley DB3, which does support transactions. And that has several modes of operation, hash, btree and recno. I haven't looked into it, but I would imagine that it makes transactions across different tables kind of tricky. In fact, I'd class it as a bit of a hack. But don't take my opinion for it, because this is all based on 2nd hand evidence. -Dom But as well as Berkeley there's innobase and gemini (not in yet?) table types that support transactions. http://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql/bychapter/manual_Table_types.html I can't say I've used any of them or would trust any of them... And MySQL has got full-text indexing now - didn't notice that one http://www.mysql.com/news/article-54.html "MySQL 3.23 now has full-text indexing and searching capabilities. This allows you to search your vast databases of textual information, with queries returning search string occurrence/relevance." Incidentally, saw your ssh letter in the new LJ... jp
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote:
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:58:36PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote:
Also i think the lack of Perl certification, is one of the biggest
problems with Perl work in london,
Are employers there too stupid to read CVs? Or too lazy?
I'm too lazy. Speaking as someone who has recently spent a while vetting
CVs for people for a job, it's hell. For a experienced perl programmer
it's easier for me to tell if you've had the experience by what jobs you've
done before. For a mid range programmer (who may have only worked at one
company before) it's really hard.
CVs are the first step through the door. I'm just trying to assess if
you're good enough to have in for an interview. That's where I, and my
boss, and probably my bosses boss will actually make the decision. A
certification system I could trust would be really helpful. It would save
so much time trying to get rid of the guy that came in and said 'I don't
use modules, I prefer to write my own code in the script.' et al.
Later.
Mark.
--
print "\n",map{my$a="\n"if(length$_6);' 'x(36-length($_)/2)."$_\n$a"} (
Name = 'Mark Fowler',Title = 'Technology Developer' ,
Firm = 'Profero Ltd',Web = 'http://www.profero.com/' ,
Email = '[EMAIL PROTECTED]', Phone = '+44 (0) 20 7700 9960' )
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* Robin Szemeti ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: IMHO to be of any use certification needs to be HUGE .. eg we need O'Reilly AND Manning behind it or it simply won't fly. We could write a i think this will end up a slow process very comprehensive set of tests and assesment levels, do all that. It could be the very best thought out, standards based certification for Perl out there .. but without a Major Backer (eg the two afore mentioned companies) its nothing ... that can wait - stage a. is all that is important for now a) Fuck it, Just do it .. ( so thats got the ball rolling) b) get some other groups (eg NY.pm ) involved to get the support of the Perl community at large ok, but i wouldn't worry about b. anytime soon, you have to remember Larry has said, he'd rather be certified than see perl certification (or something similar) Greg -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* alex ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: that's not the point. if learning tree design a course (with the community's approval natch) that is of sufficient standard and then put on their catalogs: Advanced Perl (3 days) - 1750 GBP + VAT [preparation for PCSE exam] with a nice logo imagine the value of free publicity that is coming out of that! None of the organisations mentioned (netthink, iterative, or indeed codix) have anything like the clout individually or collectively to start getting a PCSE logo recognisable to IT directors. yip its great, but you can't get there on day #1 BTW, just so we're clear - i was thinking of another org to actually do the certification. Maybe a privately owned company formed from the london.pm membership. YAS can probably take care of this, i mailed Kevin last night, but havent heard back yet -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
James Powell wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 09:59:35AM +0100, Dominic Mitchell wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 08:56:36AM +0100, James Powell wrote: Course, mysql does support transactions now... I believe with two different types of table for some reason. It's because the underlying table type is implemented using Berkeley DB3, which does support transactions. And that has several modes of operation, hash, btree and recno. I haven't looked into it, but I would imagine that it makes transactions across different tables kind of tricky. In fact, I'd class it as a bit of a hack. But don't take my opinion for it, because this is all based on 2nd hand evidence. -Dom But as well as Berkeley there's innobase and gemini (not in yet?) table types that support transactions. http://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql/bychapter/manual_Table_types.html I can't say I've used any of them or would trust any of them... I've tested innobase and it appears to be fine. It very Oracle like in the way it works (it needs loasd of resources to run quickly). MyISAM table handlers for speed and Innobase table handlers for transaction based tables (also with row locking) and you should be away. (The Innobase code is apparently not new, and has been taken from another project and bolted on, which sounds bad but actually appears to work quite well). Greg And MySQL has got full-text indexing now - didn't notice that one http://www.mysql.com/news/article-54.html "MySQL 3.23 now has full-text indexing and searching capabilities. This allows you to search your vast databases of textual information, with queries returning search string occurrence/relevance." Incidentally, saw your ssh letter in the new LJ... jp
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* Robert Shiels ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Have you thought about charging structures, SAP charge about 300gbp to take a certification exam, and they offer courses that are specifically designed i had thought about a 20 quid fee to be sent to YAS to help you pass, which culminate in taking the exam itself. And if you are collecting money and giving out qualifications, have you decided what company should be doing it. And you'll need some way to say that the certifiers are certified to do this anyway, otherwise the certification won't be worth much. i have some ideas about this, i think i mentioned it in a seperate email -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
you don't think having a single body with london.pm representation whose responsibilities would be exam delivery, assessment and certificaiton would be more efficient/effective than what you describe? alex On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Robert Shiels wrote: I think a lot of this will be about signing up to a charter or code of conduct. What we will need is an actual exam, i was thinking about this last night, and my thoughts were to write a web interface were certified certifiers could request 10 tests, by filling the names of the recipients in first. Then a script would select questions from a database of categorised questions and make up a PDF seperately for each of the recipients, the certifier would then supervise the recipient completing the test in the allotted time and afterwards they would mark it and return it (original hardcopy) to the main body. This main body may check one or two, more to ensure that their is consistency across certifiers, and assuming that the tests were all fine, the certifier would get a nice shiny PDF for each of the recipients of the test. As TIMTOWTDI in Perl, marking could be extremely difficult unless we have multiple choice questions. Is MSCS multiple choice? SAP is. /Robert -- alex nunes | t 020 7603 5723 | f 020 7603 2504 director | read the NEW story @ http://codix.net/ codix.net | 107 shepherd's bush road, london w6 7lp
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
what robert describes or what i describe? * alex ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: you don't think having a single body with london.pm representation whose responsibilities would be exam delivery, assessment and certificaiton would be more efficient/effective than what you describe? alex On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Robert Shiels wrote: I think a lot of this will be about signing up to a charter or code of conduct. What we will need is an actual exam, i was thinking about this last night, and my thoughts were to write a web interface were certified certifiers could request 10 tests, by filling the names of the recipients in first. Then a script would select questions from a database of categorised questions and make up a PDF seperately for each of the recipients, the certifier would then supervise the recipient completing the test in the allotted time and afterwards they would mark it and return it (original hardcopy) to the main body. This main body may check one or two, more to ensure that their is consistency across certifiers, and assuming that the tests were all fine, the certifier would get a nice shiny PDF for each of the recipients of the test. As TIMTOWTDI in Perl, marking could be extremely difficult unless we have multiple choice questions. Is MSCS multiple choice? SAP is. /Robert -- alex nunes | t 020 7603 5723 | f 020 7603 2504 director | read the NEW story @ http://codix.net/ codix.net | 107 shepherd's bush road, london w6 7lp -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Still screwing up References: (was Re: Job: I'm looking for one..)
At Thu, 29 Mar 2001 11:08:44 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001 08:02:39 -0500 (EST), Dave Cross wrote: At Wed, 28 Mar 2001 12:34:41 +0100, Simon Cozens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 12:02:48PM +0100, alex wrote: Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] But look at your headers: References: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Where's [EMAIL PROTECTED], Dave? You're right, the referencing is a bit screwed up. I'll take a look at it today. Dave... [who handily has his copy of "Programming Internet Email" on his desk]
Re: Still screwing up References: (was Re: Job: I'm looking for one..)
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
You're right, the referencing is a bit screwed up. I'll take a look at
it today.
Your webmail CC is screwed up too. On my mails there's now new line after
the Cc: so I get a line that says
Cc: X-Mailer: foo
which my mail client (PINE) wants to reply to...
Later.
Mark.
--
print "\n",map{my$a="\n"if(length$_6);' 'x(36-length($_)/2)."$_\n$a"} (
Name = 'Mark Fowler',Title = 'Technology Developer' ,
Firm = 'Profero Ltd',Web = 'http://www.profero.com/' ,
Email = '[EMAIL PROTECTED]', Phone = '+44 (0) 20 7700 9960' )
RE: Job: I'm looking for one..
Well as a fairly independent person in this matter, i will volunteer to coordinate this. Unless there are any objections - i already TIMTOWTDI kind of screws things up. Different people will code in different styles. How can you evaluate this? I don't think it's a huge problem. For a start, certification can be multiple choice, which eliminates the need to deal with correct answers in esoteric style. (shamless plug for my amazing perltest project - http://www.snowdrift.org/computers/perl/pt/) Secondly, there is absolutely not reason why the certification can't agree on a compulsory style. This is what happens in driving tests. There is more than one way to turn the steering wheel, from suicide spinner to hand over hand, but the driving certification declares that shuffling (or whatever it's called) is the 'correct way'. No-one actually believes that you're a dangerous driver if you use one of the other methods in some situations, and it all works OK. Thirdly, IMO certification is more about establishing that the candidate doesn't do stupid things than that they are very clever. The driving test only seeks to establish that you've read the highway code, and can get from A to B without screwing up. Likewise Perl certification should seek to show that a candidate has RTFM'd and get get from A to B without screwing up, for various values of A and B . If I see a sensible plan for certification, this sounds sensible, but consider what most people think of eg. MCSEs. Most _people_ consider MCSEs a useful way of gauge a minimum standard of knowledge in prospective employees. Most professional system engineers and programers may feel differently.
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
sorry, was unclear. robert proposed a meta-certification body which then gave the tests out to certifiers (netthink, iterative etc). this seems to me to be far too complicated and fragmented. i think you need a single organisation which plays the difficult balancing act of: * being respected and trusted by the Perl community (there's no point if the Perl decision makers poo poo it) * has enough autonomy from the Perl community or transparency to not be perceived as a guild / closed shop (this accusation could be levelled very easily if the exam were perceived to be designed so that only an inner sanctum could possibly pass it) * has rich enough grading so that mere mortals can achieve some level of certification and gurus can also be recognised - i think it is in everyone's interests if lots of new people pass PCSE at some level (i think there is a strong perception that Perl skills are hard to find) * being commercial - particularly focused on marketing the PCSE logo to training companies, logos and IT directors. I don't think a voluntary, well-meaning effort will achieve this. alex * alex ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: you don't think having a single body with london.pm representation whose responsibilities would be exam delivery, assessment and certificaiton would be more efficient/effective than what you describe? alex On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Robert Shiels wrote: I think a lot of this will be about signing up to a charter or code of conduct. What we will need is an actual exam, i was thinking about this last night, and my thoughts were to write a web interface were certified certifiers could request 10 tests, by filling the names of the recipients in first. Then a script would select questions from a database of categorised questions and make up a PDF seperately for each of the recipients, the certifier would then supervise the recipient completing the test in the allotted time and afterwards they would mark it and return it (original hardcopy) to the main body. This main body may check one or two, more to ensure that their is consistency across certifiers, and assuming that the tests were all fine, the certifier would get a nice shiny PDF for each of the recipients of the test. As TIMTOWTDI in Perl, marking could be extremely difficult unless we have multiple choice questions. Is MSCS multiple choice? SAP is. /Robert -- alex nunes | t 020 7603 5723 | f 020 7603 2504 director | read the NEW story @ http://codix.net/ codix.net | 107 shepherd's bush road, london w6 7lp -- alex nunes | t 020 7603 5723 | f 020 7603 2504 director | read the NEW story @ http://codix.net/ codix.net | 107 shepherd's bush road, london w6 7lp
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Robin Houston [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:08:00PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote:
Can Perl do distributed database transactions?
probably .. simple multi threaded app, fork a few child processes,
establish the odd DBI connection, execute a query each return when the
last child is reaped ... 100 lines?
I think the key word in Paul's question was "transactions".
In other words, you have more than one database, possibly
in different physical (and network) locations, and you need
to perform a transaction - an _atomic_ transaction - across
several of them.
No partial failure allowed, it has to either succeed completely
or fail completely.
eval {
$fulfillment_dbh-do("BEGIN TRANSACTION");
$payment_dbh-do("BEGIN TRANSACTION");
do_the_payment_thing($payment_dbh);
do_the_fulfillment_thing($fulfillment_dbh);
$payment_dbh-do("COMMIT");
$fulfillment_dbh-do("COMMIT");
}
if $@ {
$fulfillment_dbh-do("ROLLBACK");
$payment_dbh-do("ROLLBACK");
}
Hmm... not quite sure what happens if either of the COMMITs fail. And
I'd bemused as to how Java would handle it too...
--
Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Piers Cawley ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Hmm... Given that big business seems to have bought some of the ideas of 'Just In Time' stock holding and delivery type stuff, maybe the time has come to start pushing Perl and open source programming as being 'Just In Time Development'. I'm not sure this is a good image for Perl, we want to get away from the last minute solution image. I'm sure I don't agree with you. If your solution isn't ready (and tested and all that stuff) at the last minute and no earlier then you should be using the spare time generated to make the solution better, right up until the last minute. -- Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Matthew Byng-Maddick ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:47:03PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: I suggest (with Dave Cross' blessing), that we form the London.pm certification. NetThink and Iterative will sign up to teach to a given level of skills (or several levels). Fuck it. Let's do it. Firstly, mod_perl passim. Well as a fairly independent person in this matter, i will volunteer to coordinate this. Unless there are any objections - i already TIMTOWTDI kind of screws things up. Different people will code in different styles. How can you evaluate this? it doesn't matter how they achieve most things, as long as they can do them ... reasonably have a reasonable plan og how to achieve this _quickly_. I can Please share this it's too late tonight, i'll try and remember tommorow, the plan is more how to get it organised and do all the dull procedural stuff quickly the actual content is up for debate, although i think levels of perl `skillz' would suck, i'd much rather see a ``core'' perl certification, and slowly secondary skill certifications being developed and registered, however at launch, probably WWW and DBI spring to mind as two secondary ones that will be there from the word go - however they will be focused quite tightly on their areas Start with Core Perl, covers the basics of being able to program in Perl. Maybe an add on for OO Concepts in Perl. Certifications should be competency based rather than being 'complete this course, here's your certificate, which leads to problems of qualifying as an assessor, but it's worth worrying about. Once we know what the competencies required for a given certification are, then the various training houses can come up with training material and assessment services to help people reach that level of certification. Gill's got a good deal of experience in dealing with Competency based qualifications... -- Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
At 21:24 28/03/2001, you wrote:
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:58:36PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote:
Also i think the lack of Perl certification, is one of the biggest
problems with Perl work in london,
Are employers there too stupid to read CVs? Or too lazy? Or is
there some other benefit certification bestows besides having you
laughed at in the pub because you ("one", not personally of course :)
automatically rank alongst all those other "paper" Perl programmers?
http://www.tekmetrics.com/ aka brainbench seems to still be going
strong.
And last time I looked, they claimed I was the best Perl programmer
in London. Don't expect that to change soon either - as they've just
started charging for tests.
Do they still claim that I'm the best perl programmer in the UK? If so
it's completely bloody surreal...
--
Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* alex ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: sorry, was unclear. robert proposed a meta-certification body which then gave the tests out to certifiers (netthink, iterative etc). this seems to me to be far too complicated and fragmented. i think it was me that suggested this i think you need a single organisation which plays the difficult balancing act of: * being respected and trusted by the Perl community (there's no point if the Perl decision makers poo poo it) hence the limitation to UK ROI * has enough autonomy from the Perl community or transparency to not be perceived as a guild / closed shop (this accusation could be levelled very easily if the exam were perceived to be designed so that only an inner sanctum could possibly pass it) it will be aimed at a base level, as i said earlier it at least initially will not even consider skill levels, but just competency sections * has rich enough grading so that mere mortals can achieve some i dont think it will be graded * being commercial - particularly focused on marketing the PCSE logo to training companies, logos and IT directors. I don't think a voluntary, well-meaning effort will achieve this. nope, i don't agree here - i don't think this is easy but their is precedent, YAPC::* anyway i'm posting a proposal in a few mins Greg -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
At 29 Mar 2001 11:43:59 +0100, Piers Cawley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://www.tekmetrics.com/ aka brainbench seems to still be going strong. And last time I looked, they claimed I was the best Perl programmer in London. Don't expect that to change soon either - as they've just started charging for tests. Do they still claim that I'm the best perl programmer in the UK? If so it's completely bloody surreal... According to brainbench, this is a list of the 1o best Perl programmers in the UK. How many names do _you_ recognise? 4.82 Piers Cawley 4.71 Matthew Robinson 4.67 Rob Partington 4.66 Dave Cross 4.61 Steve Keay 4.6 Ben Bell 4.53 David Bloomfield 4.49 Christof Damian 4.46 Nick Cleaton 4.46 Maurice Buxton Dave...
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Greg Cope wrote: I once read a report (18 months ago) where the same projects where given to lots of programmers, the usualy results were show i.e algorythm design was the most important factor, although on the whole scripting langauges were faster to develope in, and had faster execuion speeds and lower memory footprints. I should try and find it again as I've lost the URL. You may be looking for this: http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf An empirical comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl for a search/string-processing program Or google for "empirical comparison Python Rexx program" for a few references. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Paul Makepeace wrote: Can you trivially embed a perl network application in a browser? [snip] Java's favour is not *entirely* due to massive marketing pimpery. Java support in browsers didn't magically come because Microsoft and Netscape said "Hey, let's develop a Java plug-in for our browser". Try doing Java in Lynx. Or Mosaic. Is there even a plugin for Netscape 3.0? I'd say that's marketing and not something built-in. You want client-side Perl, you have ActiveState's PerlScript. What, nobody has a client for it? Well, lack of marketing. I think there was even a Tcl plugin for Netscape that nobody used. Probably not because of merit or lack thereof, but just because it wasn't hyped enough, and/or didn't ship as standard with a major browser. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On 29/03/2001 at 11:56 +0100, Philip Newton wrote: Try doing Java in Lynx. Or Mosaic. Is there even a plugin for Netscape 3.0? Netscape 2 had Java built in, around the turn of 95/96. HotJava was also about but that (understandably) died around the same time. I *think* IE3 also did Java, about May '96. mutter bias="Oven"anyway, most client side interaction seems to be done with Flash anyway/mutter -- :: paul :: this world's crazy, give me the gun
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, you wrote: * Robin Szemeti ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: IMHO to be of any use certification needs to be HUGE .. eg we need O'Reilly AND Manning behind it or it simply won't fly. We could write a i think this will end up a slow process umm .. so long as you have a benevolent dictator at the top its not that slow... :) .. you are hereby elected benevolent dictator :))) very comprehensive set of tests and assesment levels, do all that. It could be the very best thought out, standards based certification for Perl out there .. but without a Major Backer (eg the two afore mentioned companies) its nothing ... that can wait - stage a. is all that is important for now a) Fuck it, Just do it .. ( so thats got the ball rolling) b) get some other groups (eg NY.pm ) involved to get the support of the Perl community at large ok, but i wouldn't worry about b. anytime soon, you have to remember Larry has said, he'd rather be certified than see perl certification (or something similar) he did ? ... ?? ... dunno.. if its ever going to get there at a corporate level we need this. whos is the head perl advocacy bod/guru whatever .. surely someone should speak to them at some point too ..preferably sooner than later? -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 11:32:57AM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote: Hmm... not quite sure what happens if either of the COMMITs fail. That's exactly the problem. And what if you crash after the first COMMIT? This is not an easy problem. The usual solution is called "two-phase commit". See http://www.sei.cmu.edu/str/descriptions/dtpc.html for example. And I'd bemused as to how Java would handle it too... It's not a language issue per se. J2EE is (a lot!) more than just the Java language. http://www.subrahmanyam.com/articles/jts/JTS.html .robin. -- "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Roger Burton West wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 05:44:04AM -0500, Dave Cross wrote: 4.46 Nick Cleaton Ought to be on here, ask Gellyfish... He heh Look what they say I got : Total Tests Completed 41233 Your Rank (1 = top) 40653 Your Percentile (99 = top): 1 Ah - See, you have to put in the score /J\
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Philip Newton wrote: Greg Cope wrote: I once read a report (18 months ago) where the same projects where given to lots of programmers, the usualy results were show i.e algorythm design was the most important factor, although on the whole scripting langauges were faster to develope in, and had faster execuion speeds and lower memory footprints. I should try and find it again as I've lost the URL. You may be looking for this: http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf An empirical comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl for a search/string-processing program That looks the ticket ta. Greg Or google for "empirical comparison Python Rexx program" for a few references. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:47:03PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: I'd advise getting some non-trainers involved as well, perhaps Blackstar and other Perl businesses? (their hook will be that they become partners and get logo placement in whatever pseudo forum/organisation does this) Somehow I doubt that the company still known as BlackStar will be that interested. I may be interested in being involved from a different perspective though Tony -- -- Tony Bowden | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.tmtm.com/ we barely have time to react in this world let alone rehearse --
Re: Still screwing up References: (was Re: Job: I'm looking for one..)
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001 11:17:17 +0100 (BST), Mark Fowler wrote:
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
You're right, the referencing is a bit screwed up. I'll take a look at
it today.
Actually, that message was OK.
Your webmail CC is screwed up too. On my mails there's now new line after
the Cc: so I get a line that says
Cc: X-Mailer: foo
which my mail client (PINE) wants to reply to...
That's a bug in PINE, then. There is actually a newline after Cc:, but like some other
parsers (including an early version of mine), PINE can't cope with an empty field.
MIME::Parser does something strange, too: with empty fields, -get_all returns either
('') or (undef) (I can't remember which), but with non-empty fields, -get_all returns
the contents with newlines intact, confusing things immensely for formatting code.
--
Peter Haworth [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"My own writing [...] is of such high quality that it's almost a new media in
itself. There is writing, and there is My Writing. UltraWriting. Writing++.
Object-orientated writing with full pre-emptive multi-tasking running at
1000 rpm with a 20ms seek time, at a reasonable price (credit available)."
-- Ashley Pomeroy
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 10:30:26AM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: ok, but i wouldn't worry about b. anytime soon, you have to remember Larry has said, he'd rather be certified than see perl certification (or something similar) It would be nice to get his backing, but I think that to do that we would have to get a system working, and then show him that the certification is in fact meaningful and not Just Another String Of Letters. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/ This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine. ** I read encrypted mail first, so encrypt if your message is important ** PGP signature
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* David Cantrell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 10:30:26AM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: ok, but i wouldn't worry about b. anytime soon, you have to remember Larry has said, he'd rather be certified than see perl certification (or something similar) It would be nice to get his backing, but I think that to do that we would have to get a system working, and then show him that the certification is in fact meaningful and not Just Another String Of Letters. the main priority, is to get the thing set up, everything else is secondary. -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 11:32:57AM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote:
Robin Houston [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
No partial failure allowed, it has to either succeed completely
or fail completely.
Hmm... not quite sure what happens if either of the COMMITs fail. And
I'd bemused as to how Java would handle it too...
eval {
$fulfillment_dbh-do("BEGIN TRANSACTION");
$payment_dbh-do("BEGIN TRANSACTION");
do_the_payment_thing($payment_dbh);
do_the_fulfillment_thing($fulfillment_dbh);
$payment_dbh-do("COMMIT");
$fulfillment_dbh-do("COMMIT");
That is not atomic. You need to do both COMMITs as one operation.
}
At this point, your process dies horribly.
if $@ {
$fulfillment_dbh-do("ROLLBACK");
Or for more fun, die horribly here instead.
$payment_dbh-do("ROLLBACK");
}
You need the rdbms to do the rollback itself if the commit fails, or if
a connection times out after a BEGIN TRANSACTION and without a COMMIT
occurring. You need some way of getting the two systems talking to
each other so that they can synchronise the BEGIN TRANSACTIONs and the
COMMITs. Ouch.
Can someone remind me why I don't do financial work any more? Oh yeah :-)
--
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/
This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine.
** I read encrypted mail first, so encrypt if your message is important **
PGP signature
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
At 04:42 AM 29.3.2001 -0500, Dave Cross wrote: O'Reilly wil like it cos they get to sell 'Perl For PCSE(stage 1)' etc .. Ooh. I think you've just given me an idea for my next book :) "Gary Numan's guide to the PCSE"... ;) -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Tony Bowden wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 12:07:01PM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote: 4.46 Nick Cleaton 4.46 Maurice Buxton Coo, I'm on 4.46 as well. Me four. Although they seem to have lost my score. I have a nice shiny certificate though ... Nick say's he has a nice shiny certificate as well - I have one 'Saying Certified Perl Master' but they appear to have lost my score - it was about tow years ago I took the test I took the free Korn Shell one and got 3.85 just before lunch which was pretty impressive as I was beginning to get impatient after about 15 out of 40 questions. /J\
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 10:33:59AM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Robert Shiels ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Have you thought about charging structures, SAP charge about 300gbp to take a certification exam, and they offer courses that are specifically designed i had thought about a 20 quid fee to be sent to YAS I think (although I'm not sure) Greg sees the plan working the same way as I do: we (the various trainers involved) provide training courses at our usual rates which *prepare* the student to take an exam for a nominal fee to gain accreditation. (ie, training courses don't include or substitute for the exam.) -- FAILURE: When Your Best Just Isn't Good Enough http://www.despair.com
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 10:30:26AM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: ok, but i wouldn't worry about b. anytime soon, you have to remember Larry has said, he'd rather be certified than see perl certification (or something similar) Bzzt. That was to do with ANSI certification. -- "You can have my Unix system when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers."
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 08:00:46PM +0100, Jonathan Stowe wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Tony Bowden wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 12:07:01PM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote: 4.46 Nick Cleaton 4.46 Maurice Buxton Coo, I'm on 4.46 as well. Me four. Although they seem to have lost my score. I have a nice shiny certificate though ... Nick say's he has a nice shiny certificate as well - I have one 'Saying Certified Perl Master' but they appear to have lost my score - it was about tow years ago I took the test I'm a Certified Perl Druid. I outrank you. :-) dha -- David H. Adler - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.panix.com/~dha/ For the Forth aficionados reading this column, I offer my idea of the ideal bumper sticker: "YOU FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN." - Chip Salzenberg, in The Perl Journal #12
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
easier said than done - it's a lot easier to hire good people than convince clients that perl is the way forward - i may be wrong but i think there are less and less big Perl projects out there available to perl consultancies. once you get to a particular price bracket (necessary to afford and retain uber perl hackers) people start wanting to hear the corporate technology buzzwords - j2ee, open market, bea, sap, siebel etc this is just my 2p - please appreciate that i would love the situation to be different (ie people queueing up for solutions using open source methods - particulary perl) but i don't think that is the market situation. alex On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: y* Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 11:41:33PM +0100, Aaron Trevena wrote: On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Roger Burton West wrote: Just to let you all know I'm on the market again. Me too. er.. and me. Who was it that was saying that the contract market was great just now? i think it was me, i dont want to go into this too much, but i think that a general perl consultancy (you know who you are) can take these guys, be very clever at marketting yourselves and prosper -- alex nunes | t 020 7603 5723 | f 020 7603 2504 director | read the NEW story @ http://codix.net/ codix.net | 107 shepherd's bush road, london w6 7lp
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, alex wrote: easier said than done - it's a lot easier to hire good people than convince clients that perl is the way forward - i may be wrong but i think there are less and less big Perl projects out there available to perl consultancies. once you get to a particular price bracket (necessary to afford and retain uber perl hackers) people start wanting to hear the corporate technology buzzwords - j2ee, open market, bea, sap, siebel etc This does appear to be true, mind you many companies are recruiting perl developers for themselves. This is healthy. I think a lot of companies see j2ee, weblogic, etc as 'safe' despite quite catastrophic failures and the high cost (the price of a consultant or contractor for any of these buzz technologies is 2 or 3 times the price for less trendy technologies). I think java is likely to be associated with a load of spectacular failures. I don't think any project has failed because of cost or flaws in perl, and major companies are migrating towards perl and oss in general. many vendors like weblogic are claiming sites liek amazon use technology when they have migrated to perl. perhaps its time to beat these vendors at their own game with a list of their clients who have migrated. A. -- A HREF = "http://termisoc.org/~betty" Betty @ termisoc.org /A "As a youngster Fred fought sea battles on the village pond using a complex system of signals he devised that was later adopted by the Royal Navy. " (this email has nothing to do with any organisation except me)
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Mark Fowler wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Aaron Trevena wrote: I think java is likely to be associated with a load of spectacular failures. To be fair, most of these won't be Java's fault. It's just that Java is No, they'll be the vendor JVM's fault. :) the first choice of someone who is going on buzzwords, and hasn't really thought about the technical issues involved. True. MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it. -- Mae West
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* Aaron Trevena ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I think its partially the vendors fault - they are pushing java as a solution for things it clearly isn't right for. out of curiousity - such as (i.e. which vendors are pushing java for inappropriate problem sapces)? -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 12:16:07PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote: I'd also add that Java, to my eyes, seems dreadfully uncooperative. Is it really as hard as it seems to get a non Java program to talk to j2ee stuff? Or is it all just part of the Java marketing? Is it me or is COM actually way easier to use than CORBA? The "J2EE platform" consists of so many disparate technologies that it's very hard to generalise about it. It's quite easy to get a non-Java program to talk to an HTTP servlet, for example :-) Which parts of J2EE tend to get used the most in enterprise environments? Anyone got any ideas/experience? Presumably most people build solutions around e.g. weblogic, rather than doing everything from raw ingredients. .robin. -- "You are bound to be in a state of mental unrest, even turmoil. And of course there can be no inner peace: be proud of it!"
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Aaron Trevena ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I think its partially the vendors fault - they are pushing java as a solution for things it clearly isn't right for. out of curiousity - such as (i.e. which vendors are pushing java for inappropriate problem sapces)? Plain and simply I don't think java is the right technology for e-commerce, plain and simple. Accounting, some business processes map well to java but not all and certainly not anything involving parsing and suchlike of any kind. I don't think java is suitable for client/server systems either - having both written and used java client/server apps, the networking classes in 1.2 and 1.3 suck badly and make the code long, slow and unclear. A. -- A HREF = "http://termisoc.org/~betty" Betty @ termisoc.org /A "As a youngster Fred fought sea battles on the village pond using a complex system of signals he devised that was later adopted by the Royal Navy. " (this email has nothing to do with any organisation except me)
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 12:02:48PM +0100, alex wrote: ps the big killer is that there is no large corporate generating tons of noise about Perl - whereas this is not the case for Java. Wait until TPC. -- Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
At Wed, 28 Mar 2001 12:34:41 +0100, Simon Cozens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 12:02:48PM +0100, alex wrote: ps the big killer is that there is no large corporate generating tons of noise about Perl - whereas this is not the case for Java. Wait until TPC. Sounds interesting. Care to elucidate?
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
"Jonathan Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The recent .com crash has had many desirable effects as well as undesirable ones, and one of these is the devaluation in hype in .com related technologies. An awful lot of the value of the big packages is based on future value - "You don't need this software today, but you will in a year's time so buy it today and you'll be ahead of the competition and able to scale up fast when the orders start pouring in!". This doesn't carry much weight anymore. Hmm... Given that big business seems to have bought some of the ideas of 'Just In Time' stock holding and delivery type stuff, maybe the time has come to start pushing Perl and open source programming as being 'Just In Time Development'. [FX: Makes note in the 'you really should turn this into some real marketing literature' file.] -- Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Dominic Mitchell wrote:
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:08:59PM +0100, Leon Brocard wrote:
Discuss.
s/fuck|tits|arse//;
Nonono. You want reusable components so you don't end up reinventing the
wheel, badly.
use Regexp::Common 'clean'; # don't muck with my $,
s/$RE{profanity}//g;
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED]
All opinions are my own, not my employer's.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
RE: Job: I'm looking for one..
i'm not sure this does cut both ways - if what you are saying is correct - then java's dominance becomes even more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. i don't think it's the corporates themselves who are making all the noise about java - it's an aggressive sun PR department which is latching on to corporate java projects and then turning these into "case studies". basically, no matter how much good-natured perl advocacy there is out there - it's always going to be very hard to influence corporate decision makers when you are up against an army of buzzword technology salaried PR departments. i think the difference between Linux and Perl is relevant. Linux has been adopted by big hardware manufacturers in an effort to challenge M$ dominance. Linux is therefore gaining credibility in corporateland (though the jury is definitely out). The same cannot be said of Perl. Until a corporate puts marketing muscle behind it (highly unlikely) people will perceive it as a hacker technology. alex ps whoever raised the issue of opex/capex - openness: the more people i talk to nowadays about selling consultancy work - the more i hear people wanting product and support - not bespoke solutions. people out there have different notions of openness: they would prefer to be in hock to a brand name technology company (eg Open Market) than a consultancy with an exotic skillset (which does actually make some sense). One thing to remember is that the hype cuts two ways. We may read in a magazine of ten projects using Java, and none using Perl, but that is as much because the companies that are using Perl don't bother sending press releases to everyone than it is because no one is using Perl. -- alex nunes | t 020 7603 5723 | f 020 7603 2504 director | read the NEW story @ http://codix.net/ codix.net | 107 shepherd's bush road, london w6 7lp
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Original Message- From: Simon Cozens [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 12:02:48PM +0100, alex wrote: ps the big killer is that there is no large corporate generating tons of noise about Perl - whereas this is not the case for Java. Wait until TPC. Ahh come on! We need more than that! :) Where are all the things like Perl advocacy, PR, Business Awareness and non-technical expansion plans for the language discussed? Dean -- Perl coder in a sea of PHP.
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Robin Houston wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:23:01PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote: I concur. There is simply too much of the important stuff missing from Java to make it useable for web content delivery as far as I can tell. I just couldn't do half of what I do without regexes Since excellent regex libraries are freely available, this is akin to claiming that Perl is useless for writing HTTP clients because LWP isn't in the core ;-) blatantly off topic I was thinking about this the otherday - can you recommend some (pref open source) Java regex libs ? going back to the perl topics Greg .robin. -- A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal--Panama! --Guy Jacobson
RE: Job: I'm looking for one..
I quote from the MediaSurface brochure on my desk: "The Content Server is written in Perl, the de facto standard language for server-side applications on the World Wide Web." It's not just that, if a software house wants to support a languages interaction with its product, where does it go for Perl? P5P? CLPM? Could a CEO/CTO go on and really discuss sensitive matters with either group? Alas that TPI went titsup.com. Businesses love partnerships - they smell of shared risks. Businesses can partner with RedHat to get involved with Linux. They can't partner with anyone but ActiveState to get involved with Perl, and for some reason ActiveState just don't seem to have the right vibes. Also i think the lack of Perl certification, is one of the biggest problems with Perl work in london, coming from the other side of things. Yeah it's a bitch. *sigh* Greg -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:59:40PM +, Greg Cope wrote: I was thinking about this the otherday - can you recommend some (pref open source) Java regex libs ? OROMatcher. http://jakarta.apache.org/oro/index.html There's also gnu.regexp, for LGPL fans: http://www.cacas.org/~wes/java/ Both support perl5 syntax, more or less. .robin. -- "Sometimes I sit in front of my washing machine and contemplate the worthlessness of life. My washing machine isn't even plugged in." --alex
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Robin Houston wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:59:40PM +, Greg Cope wrote: I was thinking about this the otherday - can you recommend some (pref open source) Java regex libs ? OROMatcher. http://jakarta.apache.org/oro/index.html There's also gnu.regexp, for LGPL fans: http://www.cacas.org/~wes/java/ Both support perl5 syntax, more or less. .robin. Ta. Greg -- "Sometimes I sit in front of my washing machine and contemplate the worthlessness of life. My washing machine isn't even plugged in." --alex
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, you wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:23:01PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote: I concur. There is simply too much of the important stuff missing from Java to make it useable for web content delivery as far as I can tell. I just couldn't do half of what I do without regexes Since excellent regex libraries are freely available, like I said.. as far as i can tell .. which maybe not very far :) so .. enlighten me .. how would you go about using regexes in Java? -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Robin Houston wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:23:01PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote: I concur. There is simply too much of the important stuff missing from Java to make it useable for web content delivery as far as I can tell. I just couldn't do half of what I do without regexes Since excellent regex libraries are freely available, this is akin to claiming that Perl is useless for writing HTTP clients because LWP isn't in the core ;-) any regex that requires 8 lines to do what perl does in 1 is hardly excellent. A. -- A HREF = "http://termisoc.org/~betty" Betty @ termisoc.org /A "As a youngster Fred fought sea battles on the village pond using a complex system of signals he devised that was later adopted by the Royal Navy. " (this email has nothing to do with any organisation except me)
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:08:59PM +0100, Leon Brocard wrote: I reckon interperability is big, and that XML-RPC (or possibly even SOAP) will change the way we work. There's no point writing everything in one language or environment any more. Microsoft may have understood this with .NET. Discuss. Correct, especially SOAP, WSDL, etc. This is going to be very big indeed. MS is betting their company on this. Watch out... Paul
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:58:36PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: It's not just that, if a software house wants to support a languages interaction with its product, where does it go for Perl? P5P? CLPM? NetThink? :) Also i think the lack of Perl certification, is one of the biggest problems with Perl work in london, coming from the other side of things. Hmm. I wonder how we could go about fixing that. -- King's Law of Clues : Common sense is inversely proportional to the academic intelligence of the person concerned.
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, you wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:10:00PM +0100, Aaron Trevena wrote: Plain and simply I don't think java is the right technology for e-commerce, plain and simple. Why not? Can Perl do distributed database transactions? probably .. simple multi threaded app, fork a few child processes, establish the odd DBI connection, execute a query each return when the last child is reaped ... 100 lines? Can you write stored procedures in Perl? For Oracle? i thought (but have never tried) thats what OraPerl did .. (-- the database most often used in e-commerce.) is it? ... sure you don't mean 'the database used by most large corporates for e-commerce' ? I know nothing about the spread of spend between the large coprporations and the small 5 dollar outfits .. but theres a hell of a lot of small guys out there, running MySQL and postgres ... maybe in spend oracle wins, but in sheer numbers of transaction the other 2 proabably have the upper hand Are Perl's threads stable? And its libraries entirely threadsafe? are Javas? hint: do not mention java threading and cross platform compatability to my colleague as his hair is thin enough already Does Perl even directly support threading at the language level? nope .. but do you need to? why do you need threads to do point-click-buy? sure you can use threads to advantage in some situations, but they are not essential by any means ... Can you trivially embed a perl network application in a browser? no .. but its not trivial in Java either .. a random small app on a demo CD is a world away from a real live multi platform Java app on the net .. my colleague has been working on getting a multiclient network app up to run consistently on ie 4/5 netscape 4/4.7 windoze and mac for the last 6 months or so ... I agreee that Javas portability of classes between server and client is an amazing thing .. but its not trouble free, or guaranteed as the blurb would have you believe. Java's favour is not *entirely* due to massive marketing pimpery. no .. it _does_ have its strong points .. I wouldn't have even bought a book if i thought it was really bad .. but it just seems to make some things so hard to do. Mybe its just me being crap. I'd be intrested to set a good perl programmer and a Java guy head to head .. get em to build an app to the same spec and see how long they took, and then get them to extend it in some way and time that .. don't get me wrong .. I'm not just Java bashing .. but really, the hype it gets would have you believe its all tings to all men .. in reallity its got good points, but some big holes too ... -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* Paul Makepeace ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:10:00PM +0100, Aaron Trevena wrote: Plain and simply I don't think java is the right technology for e-commerce, plain and simple. Why not? Can Perl do distributed database transactions? Can you write stored procedures in Perl? For Oracle? (-- the database most often used in e-commerce.) Are Perl's threads stable? And its libraries entirely threadsafe? Does Perl even directly support threading at the language level? Can you trivially embed a perl network application in a browser? Java's favour is not *entirely* due to massive marketing pimpery. the one thing that comes out of paul's comments is that he mentions database operations and client side processing in a browser, and this is important - i think aaron can come back citing data/text processing, etc., but the real solution medium to business problem modelling/solving with computers is not traditional language based, this glue (and i'll go ad naseum here - not glue language) is abstracted, and yes XML is likely to be a building block technology, but the devil is in the details anyway, i'll slag myself off now ... how much more wooly can you than this? ;-) -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Also i think the lack of Perl certification, is one of the biggest problems with Perl work in london, coming from the other side of things. Hmm. I wonder how we could go about fixing that. My favourite solution in business when you are faced with the problem of people not wanting you to implement something or not being sure about it and wanting a period of consideration is as follows ... fuck it, just do it (who says i couldn't work for nike) I'd suggest that it is a reasonable working assumption that both NetThink, Iterative and other Perl Consultancies/Trainers want to make money. I'd also state the assumption that if proposed to the wider Perl community - Perl certification would go back into argument state, so I suggest (with Dave Cross' blessing), that we form the London.pm certification. NetThink and Iterative will sign up to teach to a given level of skills (or several levels). This process _has_ to be open and should have a deadline. If we can get something that helps london / south england and/or the UK then we can achieve something. I'd advise getting some non-trainers involved as well, perhaps Blackstar and other Perl businesses? (their hook will be that they become partners and get logo placement in whatever pseudo forum/organisation does this) I realise this action and the attitude may not be popular on the wider stage, but ho hum. Thoughts? If Simon (NetThink), Piers/Leon (Iterative), Dave Cross (with his london.pm hat on) and a couple of companies that use Perl say this is a good idea, i think we can do this. Greg -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* Paul Makepeace ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:08:59PM +0100, Leon Brocard wrote: I reckon interperability is big, and that XML-RPC (or possibly even SOAP) will change the way we work. There's no point writing everything in one language or environment any more. Microsoft may have understood this with .NET. Discuss. Correct, especially SOAP, WSDL, etc. This is going to be very big indeed. MS is betting their company on this. Watch out... i'll fuck them if its the last thing i do on this one, trust me -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:08:00PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote: Can Perl do distributed database transactions? probably .. simple multi threaded app, fork a few child processes, establish the odd DBI connection, execute a query each return when the last child is reaped ... 100 lines? I think the key word in Paul's question was "transactions". In other words, you have more than one database, possibly in different physical (and network) locations, and you need to perform a transaction - an _atomic_ transaction - across several of them. No partial failure allowed, it has to either succeed completely or fail completely. The obvious example is a bank transfer. Add the money to one account, remove it from the other. Oops, the second part failed. Double your money! Actually, any e-commerce operation has the same problem. You need to fulfil the order *and* charge the customer - those two things almost certainly can't happen on the same machine. If you do one and not the other, then either the supplier or the customer is obviously losing out. It has to be neither or both. I think that's what Paul was talking about. He can correct me if I'm wrong :-) .robin. -- select replace(a, CHR(88), replace(a,,'')) from ( select 'select replace(a, CHR(88), replace(a,,)) from ( select ''X'' a from dual)' a from dual)
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
* Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:47:03PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: I suggest (with Dave Cross' blessing), that we form the London.pm certification. NetThink and Iterative will sign up to teach to a given level of skills (or several levels). Fuck it. Let's do it. Well as a fairly independent person in this matter, i will volunteer to coordinate this. Unless there are any objections - i already have a reasonable plan og how to achieve this _quickly_. I can take it from Simon's email that NetThink believe this to be a good idea, if others can reply _on list_ we can get a good sense of commitment, i think i identified some parties in the previous email. Greg -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:47:03PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: I suggest (with Dave Cross' blessing), that we form the London.pm certification. NetThink and Iterative will sign up to teach to a given level of skills (or several levels). Fuck it. Let's do it. Firstly, mod_perl passim. Well as a fairly independent person in this matter, i will volunteer to coordinate this. Unless there are any objections - i already TIMTOWTDI kind of screws things up. Different people will code in different styles. How can you evaluate this? have a reasonable plan og how to achieve this _quickly_. I can Please share this take it from Simon's email that NetThink believe this to be a good idea, if others can reply _on list_ we can get a good sense of commitment, i think i identified some parties in the previous email. If I see a sensible plan for certification, this sounds sensible, but consider what most people think of eg. MCSEs. Please enlighten us. MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency. -- George Nathan
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Also i think the lack of Perl certification, is one of the biggest problems with Perl work in london, coming from the other side of things. Hmm. I wonder how we could go about fixing that. My favourite solution in business when you are faced with the problem of people not wanting you to implement something or not being sure about it and wanting a period of consideration is as follows ... fuck it, just do it (who says i couldn't work for nike) I'd suggest that it is a reasonable working assumption that both NetThink, Iterative and other Perl Consultancies/Trainers want to make money. I'd also state the assumption that if proposed to the wider Perl community - Perl certification would go back into argument state, so I suggest (with Dave Cross' blessing), that we form the London.pm certification. NetThink and Iterative will sign up to teach to a given level of skills (or several levels). This process _has_ to be open and should have a deadline. If we can get something that helps london / south england and/or the UK then we can achieve something. I'd advise getting some non-trainers involved as well, perhaps Blackstar and other Perl businesses? (their hook will be that they become partners and get logo placement in whatever pseudo forum/organisation does this) I realise this action and the attitude may not be popular on the wider stage, but ho hum. Thoughts? If Simon (NetThink), Piers/Leon (Iterative), Dave Cross (with his london.pm hat on) and a couple of companies that use Perl say this is a good idea, i think we can do this. Strangely I was talking wiv da boss this morning about the training issues wrt perl in our department ... I might find myself doing some training in the near future . :) /J\
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:51:10PM +0100, Robin Houston wrote: I think that's what Paul was talking about. He can correct me if I'm wrong :-) Exactly what I meant :-) And Java's a whole lot better for this than COBOL, C, and other things that make you go "blech". J2EE is horribly bloated but the stuff it does is, in some cases, quite hard. And the big point is it does it today, which Perl doesn't despite Perl's doubtless eventual capability. You know, Perl's biggest problem is it being associated with slow non-mod_perl CGI scripts. It's years old but I swear this assocation will Never Die. As soon as you mention 'mod_perl' in defence people glaze over as if converting a Jehovah's Witness to New Guinea Witchcraft. All it needs is to be tightly but flexibly integrated into webserver(s), blessed with a completely new name and fronted by a flash highly corporately sponsored web page... I secretly wish "Perl 6" gets called "Something Else Completely" (no revision number for 1.0 'cos "1.0" means "barely beta" thanks to Apple, MS, etc). $1/50, Paul
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Matthew Byng-Maddick ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: TIMTOWTDI kind of screws things up. Different people will code in different styles. How can you evaluate this? it doesn't matter how they achieve most things, as long as they can do them ... reasonably Fair. Where do you draw the line of "reasonably". This falls down to personal preference. have a reasonable plan og how to achieve this _quickly_. I can Please share this it's too late tonight, i'll try and remember tommorow, the plan is more how to get it organised and do all the dull procedural stuff quickly Sure. the actual content is up for debate, although i think levels of perl `skillz' would suck, i'd much rather see a ``core'' perl certification, OK. Fair enough. This sounds reasonable. and slowly secondary skill certifications being developed and registered, however at launch, probably WWW and DBI spring to mind as two secondary ones that will be there from the word go - however they will be focused quite tightly on their areas Do you not think that in today's internet world, these mostly go together. Interestingly, though, in training new people at my current company, I discovered that they are quicker to learn Perl, and have much more of a problem with the stateless nature of HTTP and the implications of dealing with web browsers. That doesn't belong in a Perl certification. This is kind of where it gets difficult, and why the mod_perl'ers appeared to abandon it... If I see a sensible plan for certification, this sounds sensible, but consider what most people think of eg. MCSEs. Please enlighten us. well hopefully when people get in tommorow they will either say yes or no, i'll get a plan of action out soon after that I'm curious to see what you come up with. The interesting bit is where you draw the line... MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency. -- George Nathan
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 09:05:43PM +0100, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: If I see a sensible plan for certification, this sounds sensible, but consider what most people think of eg. MCSEs. That's mainly due to the M rather than the C. -- She said that she was working for the ABC News, It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use -- Elvis Costello
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Simon Cozens wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 09:05:43PM +0100, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: If I see a sensible plan for certification, this sounds sensible, but consider what most people think of eg. MCSEs. That's mainly due to the M rather than the C. OK, well some of the Cisco courses are pretty crap too... MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency. -- George Nathan
Re: Certifiable ( was Re: Job: I'm looking for one.. )
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 09:57:45PM +0100, Jonathan Stowe wrote: Maybe I should start a mailing list for discussion of this stuff tomorrow - thoughts ? Sounds a good idea. We're also happy to host it, if you want. -- "Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
At 20:47 28/03/2001, you wrote: * Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Also i think the lack of Perl certification, is one of the biggest problems with Perl work in london, coming from the other side of things. Hmm. I wonder how we could go about fixing that. My favourite solution in business when you are faced with the problem of people not wanting you to implement something or not being sure about it and wanting a period of consideration is as follows ... fuck it, just do it (who says i couldn't work for nike) I'd suggest that it is a reasonable working assumption that both NetThink, Iterative and other Perl Consultancies/Trainers want to make money. I'd also state the assumption that if proposed to the wider Perl community - Perl certification would go back into argument state, so I suggest (with Dave Cross' blessing), that we form the London.pm certification. NetThink and Iterative will sign up to teach to a given level of skills (or several levels). This process _has_ to be open and should have a deadline. If we can get something that helps london / south england and/or the UK then we can achieve something. I'd advise getting some non-trainers involved as well, perhaps Blackstar and other Perl businesses? (their hook will be that they become partners and get logo placement in whatever pseudo forum/organisation does this) I realise this action and the attitude may not be popular on the wider stage, but ho hum. Thoughts? If Simon (NetThink), Piers/Leon (Iterative), Dave Cross (with his london.pm hat on) and a couple of companies that use Perl say this is a good idea, i think we can do this. Got my blessing - for what it's worth. Dave... -- http://www.dave.org.uk SMS: [EMAIL PROTECTED] plugData Munging with Perl http://www.manning.com/cross//plug
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 09:05:43PM +0100, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: If I see a sensible plan for certification, this sounds sensible, but consider what most people think of eg. MCSEs. *We* may look down on the qualification, cos we know it's worthless just like most other qualifications, and certainly we will look with great suspicion at potential employees who try to sell themselves based solely on such qualifications. However, the Pointy Haired Ones do not realise this. They think qualification = professional whereas no qualification = amateur. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/ This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine. ** I read encrypted mail first, so encrypt if your message is important ** PGP signature
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 10:19:55PM +0100, Dave Cross wrote: London. Don't expect that to change soon either - as they've just started charging for tests. Perhaps the Perl community should have an online certification program that funnels cash into the Conway Coffers? :-) No, wait, that might just work... Paul
Re: Certifiable ( was Re: Job: I'm looking for one.. )
At 21:57 28/03/2001, you wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Matthew Byng-Maddick ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:47:03PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: [Certification things] Maybe I should start a mailing list for discussion of this stuff tomorrow - thoughts ? There _was_ a Perl certification mailing list that Skud started a while back. Don't know if it still exists tho' - been quiet for a while. Dave... -- http://www.dave.org.uk SMS: [EMAIL PROTECTED] plugData Munging with Perl http://www.manning.com/cross//plug
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, you wrote: http://www.tekmetrics.com/ aka brainbench seems to still be going strong. And last time I looked, they claimed I was the best Perl programmer in London. Don't expect that to change soon either - as they've just started charging for tests. well I just looked ... and their script failed to find 'Perl' even though they have a test for Perl ... whoever wrote the site obvioulsy dint do very well in the tests! -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
At 22:19 28/03/2001, Dave Cross wrote: At 21:24 28/03/2001, Simon wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:58:36PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: Also i think the lack of Perl certification, is one of the biggest problems with Perl work in london, http://www.tekmetrics.com/ aka brainbench seems to still be going strong. And last time I looked, they claimed I was the best Perl programmer in London. Don't expect that to change soon either - as they've just started charging for tests. Bugger! I'm not any more. Matthew Robinson has beaten me into second place. Dave... [sulking] -- http://www.dave.org.uk SMS: [EMAIL PROTECTED] plugData Munging with Perl http://www.manning.com/cross//plug
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 10:29:46PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote: advantage over other databases - speed. But I wasn't allowed to upgrade to (eg) postgresql for silly reasons which I forget now. Your PHBastard called in a $200k/month Oracle DBA and you walked after the weekend to find your root prompt replaced with NT4.0 logon box? I hate it when that happens. Paul
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 10:32:15PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote: well I just looked ... and their script failed to find 'Perl' even though they have a test for Perl ... I hope this isn't the programming language equivalent of dot-bomb stock becoming unlisted as 'junk' on the NASDAQ... "Perl dropping 2 1/8 colons against Python today..." http://home.earthlink.net/~mrob/pub/lang_srom.html Paul
Re: Certifiable ( was Re: Job: I'm looking for one.. )
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 10:22:37PM +0100, Dave Cross wrote: There _was_ a Perl certification mailing list that Skud started a while back. Unless we're thinking of different things, wasn't that just perl-trainers? Don't know if it still exists tho' - been quiet for a while. Nothing on lists.perl.org, anyhow. -- She said that she was working for the ABC News, It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use -- Elvis Costello
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
At 12:24 PM 28.3.2001 -0800, you wrote: http://www.tekmetrics.com/ aka brainbench seems to still be going strong. Heh -- they're one of my company's main competitors. I don't know the first thing about them (aside from the I think reasonable assumption that they must do roughly the same things my company does, or they wouldn't be "one of our main competitors"...), but I was informed during a tediously long meeting today [1] that they're not doing very well, saved at the moment mainly by a boatload of VC funds that they're burning through. With any luck, the certification industry will implode. 'course that could mean I need a new job, but we'll see :) [1] You mean I have to look forward to another 40 years of these damn meetings? I think Martin Blank had the right idea: "will there be meetings?" "...sure!" "No meetings." *blam*! *blam*! *blam*! -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 04:45:09PM -0500, Chris Devers wrote: Heh -- they're one of my company's main competitors. I don't know the first thing about them *cough*. Hey, that's not good, you know. :) -- The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
Re: Certifiable ( was Re: Job: I'm looking for one.. )
At 22:44 28/03/2001, you wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 10:22:37PM +0100, Dave Cross wrote: There _was_ a Perl certification mailing list that Skud started a while back. Unless we're thinking of different things, wasn't that just perl-trainers? No. There was definitely a perlcert as well. I've got about 60 mails from it from Mar/Apr last year. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Don't know if it still exists tho' - been quiet for a while. Nothing on lists.perl.org, anyhow. I'll ask Skud next time I see her on IRC. Dave... -- http://www.dave.org.uk SMS: [EMAIL PROTECTED] plugData Munging with Perl http://www.manning.com/cross//plug
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
At 10:49 PM 28.3.2001 +0100, Simon Cozens wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 04:45:09PM -0500, Chris Devers wrote: Heh -- they're one of my company's main competitors. I don't know the first thing about them *cough*. Hey, that's not good, you know. :) Well, yeah, I suppose. :) I just keep our site running, but I leave the contents of the site to Marketing. Certification exams may pay my bills, but I certainly don't care to take any of them... -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, you wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 09:26:38PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote: (my pseudo-transaction scheme for MySQL is basically : .. do this and return a closure to undo it if I to .. bung the closures in an array .. if something screws up then back it all off by walking along the array and executing the closures ... its not rocket science but it works .. sort of .. I used it for doing multiple inserts into a spread of tables I did something similar. It worked too, until not only did an insert fail, but when I was backing out, a delete failed too. There was much head-scratching. A week later, the hard disk died and the head-scratching stopped. ;)) .. Unfortunately, if you implement this sort of thing, mysql loses it's only advantage over other databases - speed. But I wasn't allowed to upgrade to (eg) postgresql for silly reasons which I forget now. well .. since in most web based uses of MySQL the 99% of queries are simple 'select * from blah where something=something_else' .. the speed is all you need .. every now and again there is reason to add a user or, very occasionally, someone buys something .. and those bits have the pseudo-transactions in .. yeah .. its slow, but I'd ratehr have that bit slow and the rest lightning quick than pretyy much anything else ... -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Certifiable ( was Re: Job: I'm looking for one.. )
* Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 09:57:45PM +0100, Jonathan Stowe wrote: Maybe I should start a mailing list for discussion of this stuff tomorrow - thoughts ? Sounds a good idea. We're also happy to host it, if you want. either is ok, although once/if we get kevin's blessing - i'd like to host it at YAS, just so it is fully independent -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Certifiable ( was Re: Job: I'm looking for one.. )
* Dave Cross ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 21:57 28/03/2001, you wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Matthew Byng-Maddick ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:47:03PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: [Certification things] Maybe I should start a mailing list for discussion of this stuff tomorrow - thoughts ? There _was_ a Perl certification mailing list that Skud started a while back. Don't know if it still exists tho' - been quiet for a while. there is an argument of not using that, and just getting it done for the UK community first. if we do this in the wider world it will take longer and never get done (imho). -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
