Israel.pm - The Israeli Perl Mongers

Agenda

On 02 December, 2004, the Israeli Perl Mongers held their regular monthly meeting. The program:

• 18:00-19:00 -- Assembly and light refreshments
• 19:00-19:30 -- Offer Kaye will lecture about "Syntax Highlighting for Fun and Profit" - How to add colored code to your presentations and live through the ordeal (hint - it's easy :-))
• 19:30-20:00 -- Uri Bruck will lecture about "Speaking in Perl" - Perl's appeal to a language professional
• 20:00-20:15 -- Break and refreshments
• 20:15-21:45 -- Shlomo Yona will lecture about "A Gentle Introduction to Automatic Classification"
• As usual after the meeting we will go out to a nearby pub/coffee-shop/etc. for a post-meeting social gathering.

Location:

Report

1. Alon Levi
2. Arik Manor
3. Gabor Szabo
4. Guez Herve'
5. Jason Friedman
6. Kfir Lavi
7. Lilia Kessler
8. Mikhael Goikhman
9. Oded S. Resnik
10. Offer Kaye
11. Ran Eilam
12. Sagiv Barhoom
13. Shaul Karl
14. Shimi Roi
15. Shlomo Yona
16. Thomas Maier
17. Uri Bruck
18. Yuval Yaari

Welcome the the December 2004 Israeli Perl Mongers meeting summary. We report. You decide.

Attendance was rather high. Several new people popped up, but some regulars were dearly missed. The new people were warmly welcomed, at least by those of us that realize that we have to welcome new mongers. And that it is fun.

Burekas were excellent. The shoppers did a great job! I must join the shopping party more often.

The talks, and the combination of talks, were some of the best we have heard in a long time.

Offer Kaye started with a delightful little syntax highlighting talk. Going over ALL the options, we learned how to view, and how to save syntax colored Perl. Ease of styling for various HTML solutions was also discussed. Techniques he demonstrated were later used by Shlomo in his talk.

I hope in the future we hear about the limits of coloring Perl code. In my VIM there are quite a few.

Then Uri Bruck talked about his favorite subjects: Perl and natural language. He showed linguistic ideas in Perl, from context sensitivity to DWIM. We need more talks on the linguistic theme. The pace was great, and there was the right combination of abstract ideas vs. concrete examples. And comparisons of examples between Perl and natural languages. As usual in such talks, there was much confusion about linguistic terminology among the audience.

Finally Shlomo Yona talked about Automatic Classification. Despite him talking about only ONE neuron, all billions (I hope) of my neurons were running fast trying to keep up. He went from the general problem, to how he aced a course by applying a very simple Perl solution. He showed code, math, and diagrams. There was a mix of CompSci talk, and hacker experience report. It was fun. At least the parts where my mental running shoes did not fail me.

For the social, we went to the coffee house AGAIN. I guess they provide a reasonable environment, if a little pricey. At my table there was talk of prototyping, bringing in new ideas to an organization, and much more. Other tables (there were 3 tables) seemed to exhibit lively conversation as well. The table is the basic social organizational unit of the PM social event.

See you next time.

This meeting summary was written by Ran Eilam.