YAPC|10 in Pittsburgh

I've never been a social computer nerd. In the places I've lived, I was lucky if another person even knew that the TV-like device on top of their desk was not called the "hard drive." So I've had to learn to hide my nerdiness. A nerd incognitus, if you will.

So if I passed up the opportunity to meet and mingle with fellow nerds, it's only because I lacked knowledge of the benefits to being a social nerd. After all, I had learned how to program Perl through little to no face-to-face social interaction, what benefit could there be to driving 10 hours to some strange location and listening to random other nerds talk about nerdy things?

After being told wonderful exciting things about YAPC 9 and Frozen Perl, I decided I had to try it. The price was right (less than $500 for the entire conference), and I'd always wanted to visit Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania being one of the places I'd like to live someday). Once I secured myself a second driver (Graham), we were off to Carnagie Mellon University.

First, my compliments to CMU. The campus is beautiful, the rooms were excellent (I've rented smaller apartments), and nobody hassled us when things got a little too social.

I learned a lot about new ways to test things (Test::A8N, Smolder), learned some interesting things about how Perl 5 manages memory (and how to reduce the size of Perl's heap). There were also some great presentations about the new development in the Perl 6 / Parrot / Rakudo areas.

Plus, I finally got to meet the people behind the names I've been IRCing with all these years. And drink. And drink with the people behind the names I've been IRCing with all these years.

All in all, I highly recommend going to YAPC every year. The Perl Community really puts on an excellent and informative conference. And if you're not already part of your local Perl Mongers group, stop by and learn something.

Look for me to apply some of my newfound knowledge over the next few months!