Report from LinuxWorld

 
 
LIVE FROM LINUXWORLD EXPO -- Day 1: Monday August 12, 2002
Special to Linux Weekly News
by Russell Pavlicek

Today was Tutorial Day for the semi-annual LinuxWorld Conference and Expo.  
While the hoards clamoring for swag on the Expo floor have to wait for
Tuesday for the show floor to open, techies bent on cramming their heads
with knowledge happily attended today's tutorials.  LinuxWorld tutorials
and conference sessions have traditionally featured some of the brightest
technical minds in the Linux world as instructors, and this year seems no
different.

I found the likes of Jon "Maddog" Hall of Linux International, Donald 
Becker of Scyld, Chris DiBona of OSDN, Jay Beale of Bastille Linux, 
Dennis Tenney of LWN, and Dave McAllister of Egenera in the speaker's 
lounge during the day.  It's shaping up to be a good conference already.

I spent most of the day in the two part Perl Tutorial taught by Kevin
Lenzo of Carnegie Mellon University.  What a class!  The morning session
crammed about 3 days worth of information into 3 hours.  I would have
developed a roaring headache from trying to absorb the phenomenal amount
of information, but my jet-lagged brain chose to lose consciousness once
in a while when the flow of information got too intense.  Still, I walked
away with a much better understanding of Perl structure and syntax.

I am still perplexed how Larry Wall could come up with some of the syntax
elements of the language without first indulging in massive quantities of
beer first.  Some elements of Perl syntax make TECO look simple by
comparison (for the young pups reading this, TECO was an ancient, cryptic,
but powerful text editor from days of yor).  Still, the power and utility
of Perl cannot be denied.

I stopped off at the LinuxWorld Expo store to find what goodies were in 
stock this time around, and promptly purchased a couple of choice shirts.
Sales seemed pretty brisk, especially since the store wasn't supposed to 
be open until tomorrow, as far as I know.  Still, shirts and hats seemed 
to be disappearing from the shelves almost as fast as the store staff 
could unpack them.

The show seems to be starting well.  Several product announcements are due 
tomorrow.  It is shaping up to be an interesting week.  Stay tuned.