Global Nerdy

Although I’m not a terribly big fan of the Perl programming language, I am a big fan of one of its best-known contributors and advocates, Damian Conway. There’s nothing quite like a Damian Conway presentation, which is equal parts pop culture, deep science, software engineering and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I make it a point to see him whenever he comes to Toronto, and that’s happening next Monday, July 27th to the Bahen Centre for Information Technology at University of Toronto to give another amusing, enlightening and most importantly, free talk. This one’s called The Missing Link, and here’s the abstract:

What do:

• watching trees grow,
• debugging debuggers,
• Greek mythology,
• code that writes code that writes code that writes code,
• the hazards of LaTeX, successful failures,
• the treacherous Vorta,
• objective syntax,
• anti-stacks,
• Danish mind-control,
• active null statements,
• synthetic standup,
• and the prospect of certain death

…all have in common?           

Watch as Damian Conway weaves them together into a new and improbably useful module that demonstrates the awesome power and beauty of Perl 5.10.

Even if you’ll never write a line of Perl in your life (which, IMHO, isn’t necessarily a bad thing), you’d do well to catch a Damian Conway presentation. His guided tours of his way-out-in-left-field thinking about life, the universe, programming and everything will turn your brain upside down, give you some good laughs, make you think about coding differently and might even make you a better developer.

Once again, the details:

• When: Monday, July 27th at 7:00 p.m.
• Where: Bahen Centre, University of Toronto (40 St. George Street), room 1160 (the major lecture theatre on the ground floor)
• How much? Free!

Show up early to make sure you get a good seat. I’ll see you there!