

Damien Conway interview: Perl 6, Java, his PhD - gtani
http://fyi.oreilly.com/2008/08/the-mind-of-damian-conway-scie.html

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astrec
Ah memories! I consider myself very fortunate to have been one of Damian's
students. The container box store mnemonic took me way back.

He's not overstating the diversity thing either. In those days the CS program
was C, Lisp, Prolog, C++, sh, MIPS assembler, operating system design, AI,
digital logic, algorithms, formal methods, and discrete mathematics.

These days, the kids I hire from the same school mostly cruised through IS
style degree with only Java/C# under their belts.

~~~
bootload
_"... Ah memories! I consider myself very fortunate to have been one of
Damian's students. ..."_

Ahh those whacky CS students from Monash. I went to RMIT & Swinny and missed
"The Damian". What kind of lectures did he run? I've heard some of his talks &
they are pretty good ~
<http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail880.html> If your lucky you
can still hear him talk for nics at Melbourne Perl Mongers.

~~~
astrec
He taught the first year intro to programming (C) with Ann Nicholson (AI
researcher), and supervised a few post graduates. Ann also taught the Lisp
course.

Damian was a fantastic lecturer with a rare ability to enthuse and engage his
students while he delivered otherwise dry material. A true master of the
story.

------
martinr
Am I the only one who considers Perl6 dead and irrelevant? I haven't seen
anything approaching a usable product out of the efforts, and how long has the
project been underway now? By the time it's finished, Perl5 is irrelevant as
all the kids will be using Python, Java, Ruby, maybe D. Legacy applications
won't switch from Perl5.

~~~
gaius
Perl 6 is an academic research language, which is weird, normally languages
come _from_ academia into commercial use.

~~~
neilk
That's an interesting insight. It's not truly "academic" because such a
language would not be considered interesting in a research sense; it has no
clear vision, no central metaphor for computing.

But if you consider the Perl community a sort of academy with its own tastes
and goals which have nothing to do with mainstream acceptance, then yes, it is
academic.

------
albertcardona
I loved the part that said: in diversity there is power. You should know as
many programming languages and paradigms as possible. And code every day to
stay fit.

