Bringing Perl to a Younger Generation
By Paul Johnson (pjcj) from Zürich.pm
Date: Tuesday, 21 August 2012 14:45
Duration: 20 minutes
Target audience: Any
Language: English
Perl is now almost 25 years old. Some of us have been using Perl for almost all that time. Many of us have been using Perl for a sizeable fraction of that time. And the reason we have been doing so is because we believe that in those cases it is the best tool for the job, however we define "best".
In order for Perl to remain viable it requires a critical mass of users, and that requires involving people who are younger than the language itself.
One way that we have tried to do that is by taking part in the Google Code-In for the last few years. This is a programme aimed at introducing students between the ages of 13 and 17 to open source software. I'd like to talk about some of our experiences running GCI and my son, Wesley, will talk about participating in GCI. He will also discuss some of the things which work and which don't work when attempting to attract a younger generation of programmers.
I have been using Perl for longer than I care to remember and I'm currently working on a grant to improve Devel::Cover, the Perl code coverage module.
Wesley is half way through his "A" level studies, which include a Computing course.
Attended by: Sebastian Willing (sewi), JJ Allen, Piotr Fusik (0xF), Nicholas Clark, Salve J. Nilsen (sjn), H.Merijn Brand (Tux), Stefan Seifert (Nine), Martin Becker (martin), Erik Colson (ecocode), Barbie, Todd Rinaldo (toddr), Gabor Szabo (szabgab), Gunnar Koppel (wk), Sawyer X (Sawyer X), Erik Johansen (uniejo), Jess Robinson (castaway), Leo Lapworth (ranguard), Tobias Kremer (soulchild), Carlos Juan Diaz (cjuan), Johann Rolschewski (jorol), Renee Bäcker (reneeb), Markus Pinkert (Bedivere), Richard Jelinek (TheWhip), Stefan Limbacher, Michele Beltrame (arthas), Henk van Oers (hvoers), Steffen Winkler (STEFFENW), Paul van Eldijk (pavel), Elena Bolshakova (helena), André Santos (andrefs), Andreas Altergott, Dmitry Karasik (McFist), Anders Melchiorsen, Minesh Patel, Tobias Reimann, Lukáš Rampa, Alex Timoshenko, Julien Fiegehenn (simbabque), Bernd Ulmann (vaxman), Gerhard Raffius, Markus Raulf, Bogdan Lucaciu (zamolxes), Alex Monney, Tudor Crisan, Darko Obradovic, Arjen Laarhoven, John van Krieken (vladtz), Sebastian Stellingwerff (webmind), Jeroen Visser (jvisser), Stefan O'Rear (sorear), Wesley Johnson (wesjdj), Sören Laird Sörries, Roman Baumer (rba), Tobias Leich (froggs), Juerd Waalboer, Sébastien Aperghis-Tramoni (maddingue), Laurent Boivin (Elbeho), Bron Gondwana (brong), Rob N ★ (robn), Oliver Miller,
