Things I learned at German Perl Workshop 2013

Last week I spent a few very nice and enjoyable days in Berlin at German Perl Workshop. I stayed at friends, who even provided me with a bike (thanks to KaWh & KlKa!) so I could properly represent Bicycle.pm.

Things I learned at German Perl Workshop in Berlin:

  • Berlin has very icy bike paths
  • Betahaus has a lot of stairs
  • "Perl programming language" is still a hot topic. I thought we decided to ignore TIOBE years ago...
  • Яндекс looks totally not like Yandex
  • Devel::YCallTrace looks interesting (store a trace inside a webapp if some cookie is set)
  • It's better to use two factor authentication than a hacked off finger
  • recognizable code != readable code, look for example at this
  • Stackato could be interesting
  • bbbike is awesome and incredibly helpful. So is Slaven.
  • Just because your laptop could connect to the projector an hour ago does not mean it will do so when you want to give a lightning talk
  • People still seem to enjoy Acme::ReturnValues
  • Do not enter a record store (Groove Records) when you have two hours two kill and an seemingly unlimited amount of money provided by the cash machine next door.
  • Vinyl is heavy (see above) (I already knew that, but it's worth repeating...)
  • Do not try to win a game at the painstation, but do play at least one round; and try all the other nice games in the Computerspielemuseum, which is where the excellent social event took place.
  • navigating unknown Berlin streets at 1:00 in the morning using a Garmin is in fact more work than using an old school map / bbbike printout (but maybe the Croatian UI was distracting me a bit..)
  • ß is a very emotional letter (at least in Germany, the Swiss are smarter and just removed it) (BTW, I also do not use it in my German writing)
  • "Auch das Imperium achtet auf Sicherheit" (because Stormtroopers are issued helmets to avoid head injury when bumping their head on some pillar while boarding an ship)
  • Handheld microphones suck (because speakers don't keep them in front of their mouth; because I have to put it down to type during live demos)
  • Do NOT drink more then two bottles of Club Mate per day (if you plan on sleeping)
  • Apache::Solr seems quite similar to Lucy, but much more hassle (XML!)
  • It pays off to own distinct (strange?) luggage (like pink backpacks), because nobody will confuse yours with theirs and thus "steal" your trolley.
  • We went from the post-workshop dim-sum to the post-dim-sum cake-eating (and drinking) location (~3 km) by four different means of transport. We left at the same time, and arrived in this order: bike (and I wasn't even trying to be fast..), taxi, on foot, subway. Bicycle++
  • Spending a sunny but cold Saturday cycling through Berlin with KlKa (and his 3 year old son sitting in their christiana bike), doing some shopping and eating delicious schwarama & falafel is a very good way to end a trip to Berlin.

Here are the slides of my two talks:

I hope that other authors will also publish their slides, preferable in the workshop wiki. The picture of me (failing to connect my laptop) is taken from here.

A big "THANK YOU" to the organisers, the sponsors, the speakers and the attendees! Next year's German Perl workshop seems to take place in Hannover. We'll see if I'll make it there...