Subverting Perl People into Smalltalk Hackers

nobody@vox.com(Randal Schwartz) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 07:36:06 -0700

After FISL, I spent a week in Rio to kick back and visit my friends of the Rio Perl Users Group (commonly known as "Rio.pm"). I offered to give a talk in exchange for hanging out for a meal, and they asked me what I would want to talk about. Of course, I said "Seaside", as in, giving the same talk I gave at FISL.

What I didn't realize is that the talk I offered to give was actually the final talk of a full day of Perl information exchange, so when I looked at the schedule, I saw nine Perl talks, and my Seaside talk! Figuring I was working my way into a slightly hostile situation, I considered changing to a more traditional Perl talk, but as I walked into the room, a few people said "looking forward to seeing your talk on Seaside".

The conference got delayed because of some power outage, so I didn't actually get to start until after I was supposed to have finished. Thus, once again, I had to edit a 90-minute talk into about 35 minutes. (Maybe that's fate with this talk: I'll never ever be able to deliver it in a leisurely pace.)

The reaction was actually quite rewarding. A number of the hardcore Perl hackers asked a lot of questions about Seaside and how it works, and about Smalltalk in general. The interest was high, and the crowd inspired to investigate this further. So, I have managed to walk into the lion's den and deliver the message, and walked out without too many scratches. Yeay.

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Methods and Messages: Randal Schwartz on Smalltalk

Subverting Perl People into Smalltalk Hackers