crckr - Slashdot User

Larry Wall Talks Perl, Culture, and Community 123

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 14, 2008 @11:49AM from the wall-to-wall-coverage dept.

LostDiver writes "Computerworld Australia caught up recently with Larry Wall of Patch and Perl fame. He talks about the development of Perl as 'scratching an itch,' a release date for Perl 6 (Christmas day, year unknown) and beauty versus practicality. Computerworld also has some more information on the upcoming Perl 6. A while back they interviewed Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame as well." jamie pointed out a interesting, related video of a presentation by Clay Shirky from last year's Supernova conference in which he discusses why the Perl community (or any web community) drives progress and innovation.

Comment Re:Figurative or literal? (Score 1) 755

by crckr on Saturday March 08, 2008 @05:55AM (#22685752) Attached to: The Universe Is 13.73 Billion Years Old

> Did they really mean a minute?
> Maybe that minute was 4 years long...

It sounded like you just pulled that number out of thin air, but then my shell whispered to me:

% echo '13.73*10^9 / (6000*365.24*24*60)' | bc 4

Give me more digits, zsh!

% echo '13.73*10^9 / (6000*365.24*24*60)' | bc -l 4.35089357784024304668

So that figurative minute should be ~4.35 Earth-now-years long.

Feed The Register: African human-powered lighting plan announced (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed on Friday November 02, 2007 @12:52PM

People. Is there anything they can't do?

The BBC reports that the Freeplay Foundation - the organisation which distributes wind-up radios to Africans unable to obtain/afford batteries or mains power - is looking to offer wind-up home lighting solutions, too.

Journal Journal: The Best Obsolete Technologies

Journal by Billosaur on Friday November 02, 2007 @12:43PM

Given the nature of the world today, where it seems a technology, application, or piece of equipment is rendered obsolete 15 minutes after it becomes available, Wired has gone back and looked at some of the best obsolete technologies. What's interesting about the list is that despite many of the items having been superseded by more modern technologies, several of them (like the Sundial or the Slide Rule) could sti

Slashdot Top Deals