Usenet Gems

By Brian McCauley (‎Nobull‎) from Birmingham.pm
Date: Tuesday, 28 August 2007 15:05
Duration: 20 minutes
Target audience: Any
Language:

You can find more information on the speaker's site:

Talk: http://birmingham.pm.org/talks/brian/YAPC-Europe-2007-Gems.odp

Gems are small items of high value and/or great beauty typically found in a mass of worthless material. Usenet is the original global distributed discussion group network. Usenet, mailing lists and other online forums are a major part of the Perl social scene, providing an extensive free resource of expert (and not so expert) advice on a range of technical issues in and around Perl. This talk explores briefly some of the rules and pitfalls of social interaction in a technical discussion forum and then looks at some "Gems" where often seemingly simple questions have revealed surprising and/or fascinating things about Perl.

Brian McCauley (NoBull) is a programmer in various languages (including not as much Perl as he'd like) for the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. He has been a regular contributor to Perl Usenet groups for many years. A member of Birmingham.pm and a YAPC regular since 2003, he became a Director of Birmingham.pm Limited when it was incorporated in 2006 in order to organise YAPC::Europe::2006.