Google AI Challenge, Fall 2011 edition

It is this time of the year again. Google has set up its Fall 2011 Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenge.

The goal is to protect your ant hill and gather food while destroying the enemy's hills.

There are starter packages for 25 languages, including Perl, for Windows and Linux environments.

The contest closes on December 18th. Submit your best efforts to move Perl up the rankings!

Here is the ranking table for Perl, there were 35 entries at the moment this post was written with a best position of 198th by grand_sbor.

Google AI Challenge, Fall 2011 edition

It is this time of the year again. Google has set up its Fall 2011 Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenge.

The goal is to protect your ant hill and gather food while destroying the enemy's hills.

There are starter packages for 25 languages, including Perl, for Windows and Linux environments.

The contest closes on December 18th. Submit your best efforts to move Perl up the rankings!

Here is the ranking table for Perl, there were 35 entries at the moment this post was written with a best position of 198th by grand_sbor.

The Perl Weekly newsletter

When it comes to getting fresh Perl news, the community provides many resources.
It can be time consuming to sift through all of them and there is always the chance that you will miss interesting tidbits about your favorite scripting language.

Lo and behold, Gabor Szabo (szabgab) comes to your rescue. His weekly Perl Weekly newsletter is an aggregate of all the recent happenings in the world of Perl programming. He is doing a great job of extracting the big news for us in order to save time to everyone.

You can read the newsletter on the web or subscribe to receive it in your mailbox. 13 issues are out already!


The Perl Channel

Gabor has been keeping himself busy recently, having the courage to stand in front of the spotlights. A few months ago, he started a series of Perl videos on YouTube. There are, as of the end of October 2011, 25 segments of about 15 minutes.

If you are starting development of Perl programs on Windows, this is another great resource for learning. There are beginner lessons, Padre tutorials, Perl 6 videos and more.

If you prefer your information presented by a live person (as opposed to read from a document), I recommend that you check it out now. Even better, watch it on your phone during your commute (WARNING: do not drive and Perl at the same time!).

The Perl Weekly newsletter

When it comes to getting fresh Perl news, the community provides many resources.
It can be time consuming to sift through all of them and there is always the chance that you will miss interesting tidbits about your favorite scripting language.

Lo and behold, Gabor Szabo (szabgab) comes to your rescue. His weekly Perl Weekly newsletter is an aggregate of all the recent happenings in the world of Perl programming. He is doing a great job of extracting the big news for us in order to save time to everyone.

You can read the newsletter on the web or subscribe to receive it in your mailbox. 13 issues are out already!


The Perl Channel

Gabor has been keeping himself busy recently, having the courage to stand in front of the spotlights. A few months ago, he started a series of Perl videos on YouTube. There are, as of the end of October 2011, 25 segments of about 15 minutes.

If you are starting development of Perl programs on Windows, this is another great resource for learning. There are beginner lessons, Padre tutorials, Perl 6 videos and more.

If you prefer your information presented by a live person (as opposed to read from a document), I recommend that you check it out now. Even better, watch it on your phone during your commute (WARNING: do not drive and Perl at the same time!).

CPAN tester

Tweets from Gabor Szabo got me curious about CPAN tests.

I work in software testing and I recognize the value of automatic tests and reports.

After checking out the CPAN Tester wiki, I installed and configured CPAN::Reporter. If I understand well, this module will automatically send the test results run on your computer to the CPAN test database when you install a new Perl module. The authors and users can see reports on all tested configurations.

This is a simple way to give back to the Perl community for those nice CPAN modules.



The process involved starts with installing the CPAN::Reporter module on your machine and saving the configuration file.

Note: When looking for the metabase-profile tool on Windows, check in the C:\Perl\cpan\build\Metabase-Fact-0.019\script directory.



You can also set up a machine to continuously test CPAN Perl modules.



Each tester registered to the CPAN gets listed according to the number of test reports sent back to the server. Gabor is making a game of climbing the ranks. Who will join the testers' army and try to beat him?



Edit June 22nd: As of now, I am registered on CPAN testers and have sent my first test report. You can check that your setup is correct by searching through the log tail. Here's my entry:

22T07:21:29Z] [dlp] [pass] [DAGOLDEN/CPAN-Reporter-1.1902.tar.gz] [MSWin32-x86-multi-thread] [perl-v5.10.1] [ddfed1a4-6e1e-1014-9872-6ddfc9b97d9d] [2011-06-22T07:21:29Z]



Let's work our way up!

CPAN tester

Tweets from Gabor Szabo got me curious about CPAN tests.
I work in software testing and I recognize the value of automatic tests and reports.
After checking out the CPAN Tester wiki, I installed and configured CPAN::Reporter. If I understand well, this module will automatically send the test results run on your computer to the CPAN test database when you install a new Perl module. The authors and users can see reports on all tested configurations.
This is a simple way to give back to the Perl community for those nice CPAN modules.

The process involved starts with installing the CPAN::Reporter module on your machine and saving the configuration file.
Note: When looking for the metabase-profile tool on Windows, check in the C:\Perl\cpan\build\Metabase-Fact-0.019\script directory.

You can also set up a machine to continuously test CPAN Perl modules.

Each tester registered to the CPAN gets listed according to the number of test reports sent back to the server. Gabor is making a game of climbing the ranks. Who will join the testers' army and try to beat him?

Edit June 22nd: As of now, I am registered on CPAN testers and have sent my first test report. You can check that your setup is correct by searching through the log tail. Here's my entry:
22T07:21:29Z] [dlp] [pass] [DAGOLDEN/CPAN-Reporter-1.1902.tar.gz] [MSWin32-x86-multi-thread] [perl-v5.10.1] [ddfed1a4-6e1e-1014-9872-6ddfc9b97d9d] [2011-06-22T07:21:29Z]

Let's work our way up!

Modern Perl

Last November, chromatic announced the availability of his book on Modern Perl. His creation is geared towards beginner Perl programmers who want to learn how to use the language in the most effective way, based on experienced programmers' know-how.
The book is also recommended to anyone who wrote Perl scripts in the distant past and wants to take advantage of Perl 5's latest features and good coding practices.
You can download the pdf file from the companion site.

Modern Perl

Last November, chromatic announced the availability of his book on Modern Perl. His creation is geared towards beginner Perl programmers who want to learn how to use the language in the most effective way, based on experienced programmers' know-how.
The book is also recommended to anyone who wrote Perl scripts in the distant past and wants to take advantage of Perl 5's latest features and good coding practices.
You can download the pdf file from the companion site.