So the conference is over. And here are some numbers, photos, links, thoughts, etc.

While many people still check every method's return value, parse die's string messages and think that exceptions should be avoided at all cost, I will try to convert all exceptions to objects, create the base exception class and catch them with simple eval without using CPAN (blasphemy!).

Following Andrew Shitov's post I want to invite you to visit a Perl conference in Ukraine 12-13 May.

This year we are going to have some special guests: Tatsuhiko Miyagawa, Gabor Szabo, Florian Ragwitz, Peter Rabbitson, Torsten Raudssus and many others. If you still have any doubts read on, otherwise rush to the registration page http://event.perlrussia.org/yr2012/!

So the other day one of our web servers was defaced and I found a Perl script that was used to clean up the logs and other leftovers. I opened it in vim and was like "What da ...". Let's go through the code with me.

This is yet another template engine. But compared to others it supports non-blocking (read/write) and streaming output.

Since 0.10 PocketIO doesn't require Plack and has a new dependency Protocol::SocketIO.

So the other day I bought a MIDI2USB interface to my piano keyboard and as a programmer I was curious about sending back and forth those MIDI events. I decided to write a simple Perl game that can help to learn the music notes. The routine is simple. The random note is generated and printed out on the terminal (like D3), then you have to find that note on the keyboard and play it. If it matches you get ok, otherwise not ok. And so on. As always CPAN saved hours of my time.

So commonly used accessors (setters/getters) I think are dangerous when overused or used without a caution. Here is a quick list why.

A "web framework that makes development fun", a "fun way to program", a "fun introduction". I am tired of this fun programming. Development shouldn't be fun, if I want fun I go and play football with my friends.

    Fun is an ephemeral emotion. I feel it right now, it doesn't have deep
    roots. Doesn't really go anywhere, it doesn't feed me in a deep way. It
    feels good, I like having fun... but it's different than joy.

    -- Kent Beck "Ease at Work"

Fun is something that makes you feel happy for a short period of time but doesn't change you and/or improve your skills. What's the point of fun programming? Suppose I use a framework, library or a module. Should I have fun by using it? No. Instead it should bring a joy by being stable, understandable, flexible etc.

"Fun" is a bad smell for a project.

In this article I've collected the best practices of TDD (Test Driven development) that help me in my work. I brought them together for the future reference, updates, sharing and discussion.