use Perl

Last night the Silicon Valley Patterns Group (SVP) took a break from reviewing books and manuscripts, and tackled Test-Driven Development (TDD) using Eclipse (an Open Source Java IDE). We had enough laptops--mostly PCs, a few Macs--to break into "pairs" of 2 and 3, with an expert or two as floaters. The organizers brought a CDR with the lastest stable Eclipse release (3.0M7) and the latest JDK. I've done a fair amount of TDD, but had only poked around with Eclipse 2.1. Eclipse 3.0 is a substantial improvement. In the unlikely even that anyone ever gets it working with Perl, I'm there in a flash.

The real value of the evening was osmosis: A bunch of nerds sharing tricks and techniques. Half the folks had never had any keyboard time with Eclipse, and several people got their first exposure to JUnit. (SVP is mostly a Java crowd, with some C++ and *cough* other languages thrown in.) I'm looking forward to part 2 next week, when we'll mix the pairs up.

This kind of experience--sitting down with non-coworker fellow travelers to share skills--is one that I haven't had for a while. Getting out of the rut now and then is fun.