Mark has made his slides available.
(Still waiting on Todd..)
Over the years, the UUASC mailing list has hosted numerous flame fests as to what is the best scripting language. We will now settle one such battle once and for all, as we will pit against each other two of UUASC's top programmers, who will take off their gloves as each one tries to convince us that they represent the better language.
At the November meeting of UUASC-OC, members Mark Nagel and Todd Jackson will become enemy combatants, with Mark representing Perl and Todd doing battle on behalf of Python. The pair will demonstrate some of the differences between the two languages by showing us coding examples of programs written in each one.
To allow our duelers the most time to prepare for the demonstrations, we are asking now for "requests" -- suggestions from our readers for potential coding assignments. Mark and Todd will choose a few of the requests and go to work on creating code using their respective languages. So, now is the time to kindly post your request. Ask them to write programs that determine which files, binary or ascii, on a system contain a certain keyword from a list of keywords. Ask them to write programs that download info from a web site every time a certain type of update occurs on that site. Or, ask them to program your TiVo so that it records shows in reverse. Hey, it can't hurt to ask!
Mark is a Cisco CCIE with 20 years of network administration and programming experience. He is the principal consultant and co-founder at Willing Minds LLC, a consultancy that focuses on infrastructure implementation and support. Mark has written in Perl since 1991, and even created a Perl program that monitors system files called Filewatcher which is available at SourceForge. Mark is preparing for the upcoming battle by working out and practicing martial arts three times per week.
Todd is a systems engineer at 8e6 Technologies, a web-filtering company in Orange. He has more than 25 years of IT experience and has worked in UNIX environments including AIX, Solaris, and most recently Linux. Todd has developed Perl scripts used for data reduction, analysis, simulation of network traffic, and various systems administration tasks. He is currently using Python for new development in those areas. Todd is preparing for the upcoming battle by watching TV while eating little chocolate doughnuts -- the breakfast of champions.