TDD (test-driven development) advocates say this approach has two major benefits.
First, because the tests embody specific uses of the yet-unwritten software, they will help tease out the design of the software, complementary to other techniques such as requirements specification and modeling. Second, the tests create a safety net, enabling the programmer to engage in the risky but necessary practice of refactoring — continuously reorganizing the code — without fear of breakage. One of XP’s tenets is that change is the only constant. As the business environment evolves, so do the requirements it imposes on software. Although software is in theory perfectly malleable, in practice we are often afraid to change it. TDD seeks to reduce that fear by controlling the risk associated with change.

– Jon Udel, Test before you leap into development

I didn’t get out of bed in time to hear the talks in the first session. I think that 9:00am is too early a starting time for the third day of a conference. Especially as everyone stays out so late in the evenings. So, the first talk I saw was Marty’s Perl6 ideas stolen from Japanese. I did say yesterday that it makes me really nervous to watch Marty speak but I knew that he wasn’t going to try and code during this one. I was a bit concerned about the talk as he had submitted a 20 minute talk which was given a 40 minute slot but it went really well. It was one of the best talks that I saw at the conference (though I could be a bit biased).

After this I went to see Jo Walsh speak on the Porn0graph. The questions asked at the end did make me wonder if I’d missed the point entirely but it seems that I hadn’t. I liked both the talk and the concept. After this I went to hear Elaine speak on the CPAN followed by Arthur speaking on Ponie.

I went to the start of Greg’s talk and then realised that we had forgotten to bring Dominus’ underwear. So, Marty and I rushed back to the hotel to get this and arrived back in time to see nearly all the lightning talks. There seemed to be about 16 of these which was far to many for one session. There is no doubt that the funniest of these was given by Philippe but my favourite one was given by Ettore Vecchione. I’m always interested in talks that demonstrate ways to improve systems. Ettore talked about his use of Win32::OLE and SpreadSheet::WriteExcel to automate a process which used to take the administrative staff, at the University he works at, 4 – 6 weeks to complete. Ettore managed to find a way to reduce this to 15 minutes. Excellent!

After this the auction took place. It was supposed to finish at 6pm but how anyone thought that Greg would be able to complete the auction in 45 minutes is beyond me. I did think that the auction was too long. The problem may be with the multiple items of books and T-shirts that get donated. These items are worth selling but seem to take up to much time. Greg had wanted to sell Marty’s hair and I’m quite glad that this didn’t go ahead. I’ve got used to the curls.

It seems that I spent the time before my talk sitting outside the lecture theatre chatting to Leon and Elaine. I always get really nervous before I speak so I was glad of the company. Once I had finished giving my talk I felt much better about the whole conference.

After the break I went to hear Uri speak about writing better Perl code. This was quite an interactive talk with Uri asking the audience lots of questions about what they thought the best way to do something was. I did think that there was going to be an argument over Here Docs but people backed down when they realised the Uri wasn’t going to change his mind about how much he loved these.

I was really looking forward to Marc’s fairy tale talk and as expected it was very enjoyable. I did feel a bit sorry for the non-English speakers in the audience as Marc spoke quite quickly and they probably found him hard to follow. The material was really good and anyone who is about on Monday evening should come and hear him give this talk at Belfast.pm.

After lunch I avoided Marty’s talk and went to hear Richard talking about Siesta. I didn’t avoid Marty’s talk because I thought it would be bad but because I get really nervous when he speaks. And especially when he is going to attempt to code live before an audience. The Siesta talk was a bit different as London.pm decided to play a drinking game and every time Richard said “Siesta” they had to drink a shot of tequila.

I didn’t hear another talk after this as I went back to the hotel to sleep before the speaker’s dinner. The speaker’s dinner was quite enjoyable. I didn’t get to speak to many people due to the layout of the tables but Leon and Dominus gave me some interesting ideas about things to do at next year’s YAPC in Belfast. I don’t know if Leon was completely serious about the dancing girls…

I went to see two tutorials – Dominus’ Programming with Iterators and Generators and Klausner’s Web Application Development using mod_perl and CPAN.

I was surprised by Dominus’ tutorial because I thought I hadn’t heard before yet it seemed to be quite familiar to me. Talking to Tony and Andrew in the break it seems that they think the examples in this tutorial had been used before in one of Dominus’ other tutorials Stolen Secrets of the Wizards of the Ivory Tower.

I didn’t learn anything at Klausner’s tutorial which disappointed me. It seems that everything he was teaching seemed self-evident to him and he kept saying something like “but that’s really simple” and then moving on. So, all the stuff I knew before I went in I understood but anything new went right over my head. It was a pity because he seemed to have some interesting ideas about how to put systems together with Class::DBI and Template::Toolkit.

It must be really difficult trying to take a tutorial class at YAPC as so many members of the audience are expert Perl programmers yet there are some members of the audience who have limited Perl experience. The other problem is that the most vocal half of the audience are the Perl experts which can make it really difficult for someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience to speak up.

I didn’t manage to write any blog entries whilst I was at YAPC. Unfortunately my laptop computer decided to die on the way to OSCon. At some point over the next few days I should get round to writing up the various talks and tutorials I attended.

I’ve just been to hear Stormy Peters’ keynote on The Business and Economics of Open Source in the Enterprise. This was one of few talks that I have been to hear at the conference that discusses commercial reasons to move to Open Source. Even though I know why I use Open Source software I really enjoyed hearing a sound business case as to why HP use this.

Stormy also listed the circumstances when she believes that you shouldn’t move to Open Source:

• The product is a control point for you
• The product should be obsoleted
• The cost involved in moving to Open Source doesn’t justify the benefit
• The IP risk is too high
• To compete against the OS Community
• Just because it’s a cool technology

I can only admire someone who is willing to stand up at the Open Source conference and say something along the lines of:

“Why should Microsoft make Windows Open Source when they are already the pervasive operating system and are making lots of money from it”.

It seems that HP has an Open Source policy document. This is a great idea as is the concept of actually keeping track on the various licenses that are being used across the company.

Hopefully I will be able to get a copy of her slides.

Last night Larry Wall, in his State of the Onion talk, announced the creation of a new project called Ponie – Perl On New Internal Engine. I spent some time yesterday at the XP tutorial chatting about the power of naming and the use of a good metaphor. If we keep using ridiculous sounding names for our projects are people not going to assume that they silly projects?

I’ve just seen a picture of Marty on the O’Reilly site.

How do you follow Larry Wall’s State of the Onion talk? Well Guido van Rossum, Shane Caraveo, Monty Widenius, Greg Stein and Theodore Ts’o had to try to do this last night at the States of the Union presentation. I didn’t hear them all as after Larry’s well constructed talk I wasn’t able to sit through the rest of them!

Well we have finally arrived in Portland! The flight wasn’t too bad considering it was completely full and we didn’t have any horrible delays to contend with.

The tutorials start tomorrow morning. Marty will be giving his Playing Together tutorial tomorrow afternoon. He doesn’t seem to be overly concerned but I’m feeling quite nervous for him. I hope it goes well.