RE [ANNOUNCE] London Perl M[ou]ngers September Social -

Fri Sep 7 08:04:30 BST 2012

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to say thanks for making me feel welcome last night I enjoyed it,

See you all at the next event,

Kindest Regards

Rick

Rick Deller 
Technical / Digital Recruitment Consultant 
Perl, Java & Search Marketing

DL: 0207 384 9907 | MOB: 07725984595 | SW: 02073849900
Suites 24 & 25 Hurlingham Studios, Ranelagh Gardens, Fulham, SW6 3PA

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-----Original Message-----
From: london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org [mailto:london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org] On Behalf Of london.pm-request at london.pm.org
Sent: 06 September 2012 19:31
To: london.pm at london.pm.org
Subject: london.pm Digest, Vol 83, Issue 16

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Today's Topics:

   1. [ANNOUNCE] Social tonight with free beer, The Edgar Wallace,
      Strand, 	WC2R 3JF (Nicholas Clark)
   2. Re: Brainbench perl test? (Peter Corlett)
   3. Re: [ANNOUNCE] London Perl M[ou]ngers September Social -
      2012-09-06 -	The Edgar Wallace, Strand, WC2R_3JF
      (Dagfinn Ilmari Manns?ker )
   4. Re: [ANNOUNCE] London Perl M[ou]ngers September Social -
      2012-09-06	- The Edgar Wallace, Strand, WC2R_3JF
      (Dagfinn Ilmari Manns?ker )
   5. Re: [ANNOUNCE] London Perl M[ou]ngers September Social -
      2012-09-06 -	The Edgar Wallace, Strand, WC2R_3JF (James Laver)
   6. Re: [ANNOUNCE] London Perl M[ou]ngers September Social -
      2012-09-06 -	The Edgar Wallace, Strand, WC2R_3JF (Peter Corlett)
   7. Italian Perl Workshop 2012 newsletter #2 - Talks, Per Course,
      Events, 	Sponsors (Michele Beltrame)
   8. Re: Brainbench perl test? (Abigail)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 15:45:44 +0100
From: Nicholas Clark <nick at ccl4.org>
Subject: [ANNOUNCE] Social tonight with free beer, The Edgar Wallace,
	Strand, 	WC2R 3JF
To: london.pm-announce at london.pm.org
Message-ID: <20120906144544.GT11125 at plum.flirble.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

The social is tonight, with free beer:

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 02:44:59PM +0100, Dagfinn Ilmari Manns?ker wrote:
> ilmari at ilmari.org (Dagfinn Ilmari Manns?ker) writes:
> 
> > Hi all,
> >
> > The September London.pm Social will be next Thursday, September 6th, 
> > at The Edgar Wallace in Aldwych/Strand.  They serve tasty pub food 
> > and have a large and ever-changing selection of lovely ales.  We've 
> > got tables reserved upstairs from 18:30 onwards.
> >
> > See you there!
> 
> As an extra incentive, PhotoBox has agreed to put a few hundred quid 
> behind the bar, so there will be free drinks not just for newbies.

Details here about the pub, and how to get to it:

http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Edgar_Wallace%2C_WC2R_3JF

Nicholas Clark

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 15:55:36 +0100
From: Peter Corlett <abuse at cabal.org.uk>
Subject: Re: Brainbench perl test?
To: "London.pm Perl M\[ou\]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <5F9362F2-552C-4E9F-A892-9A01EDD359BA at cabal.org.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On 5 Sep 2012, at 17:35, Abigail wrote:
[...]
> No. Well, it filters out the wannabees. It doesn't recognize the 
> serious coder. If, given the Fibonacci sequence, or a similar 
> recursive formula, and your first instinct is to solve it with 
> recursion or iteration, you aren't serious.

Isn't the *point* of this to be a simple test to quickly filter out the no-hopers? I'd hope it wasn't the *only* test.

Were I to be given this particular chancer-filtering shibboleth at an interview, I'd smile and comment that it's a classic interview question, and then explain that I don't have a mathematical background and thus don't know if there's a clever algorithm to find the Nth element in the sequence in less than linear time[2], but I'd research it if this was a problem that came up in real life as opposed to an interview. I am, after all, a programmer who usually hacks on server backends, not a mathematician or computer scientist. I'd then note that there are two recursive solutions, one atrocious but which most-closely models the mathematical description, and one merely rubbish that has an optimisation hack, and also a more sensible iterative solution (unless there's the aforementioned mathematical trick) and ask the interviewer which they'd prefer before making a stab at it in my doctor's handwriting on the whiteboard.

The interviewer now knows several useful things me: I've been around the block enough to recognise famous problems[0], there are holes in my knowledge but I know they exist and I'm prepared to find and learn new stuff where necessary, understand recursion and algorithmic complexity and trade-offs between time, space, and code legibility[1], and will ask questions to clarify requirements rather than go off and possibly implement the wrong thing.

Of course, booking.com is famously odd, so your interviews may well optimise for different abilities in their staff, and so this may not be not a good question for you. TIMTOWTDI applies to interviews too.

[0] Although if they asked me to prove Fermat's Last Theorem, I would suggest they might want to interview Andrew Wiles instead. I have no idea if he's any good at Perl, but given academics tend to be lousy programmers, the odds aren't good.

[1] The only reason you'd ever use the expensive recursive solution!

[2] Or at least, the solution needs more mathematics than would be required for something like "write a function to return the sum of integers from 1 to N", which has a reasonably obvious constant-time solution and is the kind of problem that does appear in real code.

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:04:26 +0100
From: ilmari at ilmari.org (Dagfinn Ilmari Manns?ker )
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] London Perl M[ou]ngers September Social -
	2012-09-06 -	The Edgar Wallace, Strand, WC2R_3JF
To: london.pm at london.pm.org
Cc: london.pm-announce at london.pm.org
Message-ID: <d8jk3w7kxad.fsf at dalvik.ping.uio.no>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Hi all,

This is tonight, hope to see as many as possible there!

We have tables reserved upstairs, and as mentioned, earlier PhotoBox (who are hiring, see <http://careers.photobox.co.uk/who-we-want/>) are kindly preloading the kitty with a few hundred quid.

ilmari at ilmari.org (Dagfinn Ilmari Manns?ker) writes:

> Hi all,
>
> The September London.pm Social will be next Thursday, September 6th, 
> at The Edgar Wallace in Aldwych/Strand.  They serve tasty pub food and 
> have a large and ever-changing selection of lovely ales.  We've got 
> tables reserved upstairs from 18:30 onwards.
>
> See you there!
>
> The Edgar Wallace
> 40-41 Essex Street
> London WC2R 3JF
> http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Edgar_Wallace,_WC2R_3JF
>
> Standard blurb:
>
> Social meets are a chance for the various members of the group to meet 
> up face to face and chat with each other about things - both Perl and
> (mostly) non-Perl - and newcomers are more than welcome. The monthly 
> meets tend to be bigger than the other ad hoc meetings that take place 
> at other times, and we make sure that they're in easy to get to 
> locations and the pub serves food (meaning that people can eat in the 
> bar if they want to). They normally start around 6.30pm (or whenever 
> people get there after work) and a group tends to be left come closing 
> time.
>
> If you're a newcomer or other first timer (even if you've been lurking 
> on the mailing list or on IRC) then please seek our Glorious Leader 
> Tom out - we have a tradition that the leader of this motley crew buys 
> the new people a drink and introduces them to people.

--
ilmari
"A disappointingly low fraction of the human race is,  at any given time, on fire." - Stig Sandbeck Mathisen

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:04:26 +0100
From: ilmari at ilmari.org (Dagfinn Ilmari Manns?ker )
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] London Perl M[ou]ngers September Social -
	2012-09-06	- The Edgar Wallace, Strand, WC2R_3JF
To: london.pm at london.pm.org
Cc: london.pm-announce at london.pm.org
Message-ID: <d8jk3w7kxad.fsf at dalvik.ping.uio.no>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Hi all,

This is tonight, hope to see as many as possible there!

We have tables reserved upstairs, and as mentioned, earlier PhotoBox
(who are hiring, see <http://careers.photobox.co.uk/who-we-want/>) are
kindly preloading the kitty with a few hundred quid.

ilmari at ilmari.org (Dagfinn Ilmari Manns?ker) writes:

> Hi all,
>
> The September London.pm Social will be next Thursday, September 6th, at
> The Edgar Wallace in Aldwych/Strand.  They serve tasty pub food and have
> a large and ever-changing selection of lovely ales.  We've got tables
> reserved upstairs from 18:30 onwards.
>
> See you there!
>
> The Edgar Wallace
> 40-41 Essex Street
> London WC2R 3JF
> http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Edgar_Wallace,_WC2R_3JF
>
> Standard blurb:
>
> Social meets are a chance for the various members of the group to meet
> up face to face and chat with each other about things - both Perl and
> (mostly) non-Perl - and newcomers are more than welcome. The monthly
> meets tend to be bigger than the other ad hoc meetings that take place
> at other times, and we make sure that they're in easy to get to
> locations and the pub serves food (meaning that people can eat in the
> bar if they want to). They normally start around 6.30pm (or whenever
> people get there after work) and a group tends to be left come closing
> time.
>
> If you're a newcomer or other first timer (even if you've been lurking
> on the mailing list or on IRC) then please seek our Glorious Leader Tom
> out - we have a tradition that the leader of this motley crew buys the
> new people a drink and introduces them to people.

-- 
ilmari
"A disappointingly low fraction of the human race is,
 at any given time, on fire." - Stig Sandbeck Mathisen

------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 16:29:48 +0100
From: James Laver <james.laver at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] London Perl M[ou]ngers September Social -
	2012-09-06 -	The Edgar Wallace, Strand, WC2R_3JF
To: "london.pm at london.pm.org" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <F3A758A8-E3ED-470F-AFC9-603A8A7A5B1F at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=utf-8

On 6 Sep 2012, at 16:04, ilmari at ilmari.org (Dagfinn Ilmari Manns?ker) wrote:

>  PhotoBox (who are hiring, see <http://careers.photobox.co.uk/who-we-want/>) are
> kindly preloading the kitty with a few hundred quid.

...so get there quickly because once ilmari starts drinking that's about half an hour ;-)

/j

------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 17:05:52 +0100
From: Peter Corlett <abuse at cabal.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] London Perl M[ou]ngers September Social -
	2012-09-06 -	The Edgar Wallace, Strand, WC2R_3JF
To: "London.pm Perl M\[ou\]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <EEDD428F-0ED6-4C24-88FE-B51E06AC7ED4 at cabal.org.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

On 6 Sep 2012, at 16:29, James Laver wrote:
[...]
> ...so get there quickly because once ilmari starts drinking that's about half an hour ;-)

I was particularly amused to watch one social where the sponsor was called over to the bar after about twenty minutes. I couldn't hear the conversation, but the expression said "What do you mean you've reached the ?250 credit limit I set!?"

------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:08:55 +0200
From: Michele Beltrame <mb at cattlegrid.info>
Subject: Italian Perl Workshop 2012 newsletter #2 - Talks, Per Course,
	Events, 	Sponsors
To: london.pm at london.pm.org
Message-ID: <5048D8A7.1060706 at cattlegrid.info>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Hello all!

A bit off topic, but I hope some of you could be interested in coming to 
IPW in Bologna in about one month. We'll also be holding a Drinkers.pm 
late night meeting there... :-)

So here we are with the second Italian Perl Workshop 2012 newsletter. 
The conference will happen on October 11th and 12th in Bologna, at the 
CNR Research Area. The workshop will feature talks both in Italian and 
English language.

http://www.perl.it/workshop/

* TALKS

We're happy to announce some of the already confirmed talks.

     - Data::Query - cutting edge SQL query generation with Perl
     - Web::Simple - micro web framework
     - Cassandra - writing a Cassandra client in Perl
     - uWSGI and PSGI? - the technology which powers a lot of cloud services
     - Perl 6 - writing regular expressions in Perl 6
     - Slic3r - Perl and 3D printing
     - Modern Perl... in italian - presentation of the Italian 
translation of chromatic's Modern Perl book
     - First steps with GCL

* CALL FOR PAPERS -> SUBMIT A TALK!

The Call for Papers is still open and IPW needs you: submit you talks!!!

This year's conference theme is Perl Jubilee, to celebrate 25 years of 
the language. The theme is however loose, and talks not related to it 
are well accepted (and we'd also like to accept a few of not so 
"perlish" ones).

Please submit your proposals here:

http://act.yapc.eu/ipw2012/cfp.html

* PERL COURSE (ITALIAN LANGUAGE)

A basic Perl Course will be help on October 1th, 2012, the day before 
the workshop. The course will be in Italian language and run by Stefano 
Rodighiero, author of the Pocket Perl book.

The course is free, just subscribe here:

http://act.yapc.eu/ipw2012/purchase

* SOCIAL EVENTS

We're organizing a few events related to the workshop. If you are 
interested (and you should!), click on the appropriate links to see the 
details.

     - Pre-workshop meeting: the not-to-be-missed social event. Link: 
http://act.yapc.eu/ipw2012/wiki?node=PreConferenceMeeting
     - Attendees dinner: on the evening of Thursday 11 October we'll 
hold the traditional IPW attendees dinner. Link: 
http://act.yapc.eu/ipw2012/wiki?node=SocialDinner
     - Training run: it's also important to be in good health, so there 
will be a run in Bologna parks and hills. Link: 
http://act.yapc.eu/ipw2012/wiki?node=Running
     - Drinkers.pm late night pub crawl: going from pub to pub in the 
Bologna students area until we can hold no more; the pub crawl will 
happen after the attendees dinner. Link: 
http://act.yapc.eu/ipw2012/wiki?node=DrinkersPmMeeting

* OUR SPONSORS

A big thank you to our sponsors: without them IPW would be impossible to 
organize. Our sponsors are: Booking.Com, Seeweb, musixmatch, Netlogica, 
Italpro, Geoesse, Leader.It, O?Reilly Media, No Starch Press, Pragmatic 
Bookshelf.

* ...AND WHILE WE WAIT...

The Parma GNU/Linux User Group organizes, on September 15th (at 3pm) the 
"Aperitivo con il Bosone di Higgs". Information (in Italian language) is 
available here:

http://www.parma.linux.it/news/2012/09/aperitivo-con-il-bosone-di-higgs

IPW is you chance to visit Bologna!

IPW web site: http://www.perl.it/workshop/

------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 20:34:29 +0200
From: Abigail <abigail at abigail.be>
Subject: Re: Brainbench perl test?
To: "London.pm Perl M\[ou\]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <20120906183429.GA2174 at almanda>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Thu, Sep 06, 2012 at 03:55:36PM +0100, Peter Corlett wrote:
> On 5 Sep 2012, at 17:35, Abigail wrote:
> [...]
> > No. Well, it filters out the wannabees. It doesn't recognize the serious
> > coder. If, given the Fibonacci sequence, or a similar recursive formula,
> > and your first instinct is to solve it with recursion or iteration, you
> > aren't serious.
> 
> Isn't the *point* of this to be a simple test to quickly filter out the no-hopers? I'd hope it wasn't the *only* test.

Well, I responded to uri who claimed it was the distinguish between wannabees
and serious coders. But in my book, being able to calculate the Nth Fibonnaci
number doesn't make you a serious coder. It just means you've past one hurdle,
and I will have some followup questions. You haven't failed the interview,
but you haven't shown that you're a serious coder yet.

But if I gave you a recursive formula (Fibonnaci or something similar), and
you show that you know how to calculate a generating functions, you do 
score bonus points. Extra points if you can even do the calculations in a
few minutes. Heck, I'd even give some points if you know what generating
functions are.

Abigail

------------------------------

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