Final Day of LCA... What a week. Missed the keynote today, but I'll probably catch the video next week. Lots of people all day talking about Python. I've had a play with it, but I really can't see much of a difference between the dynamic languages... it's all a matter of style. I personally use Ruby at the moment (which seems to have a really bad rep at LCA) purely because it gives me ActiveRecord and Rails.... which are very rapid and have excellent community support. It's a pragmatic decision more than anything - gets me stuff done fast and it's not .net :)
Planned on going to Farsight first, but ended up skipping to Kimberlee's Law talk as I couldn't be bothered to walk to Old Arts (I was kinda interested too). Great talk - she made some bold predictions, and a lot of people are obviously worried about all this stuff. Her core message was pretty sound though, as developers we should not stress about it too much and keep on writing cool stuff.
At lunch I went to Russell Cokers blogging competition discussion. We had a good discussion and the topic of Blog Carnivals came up - looks cool and I will definitely check them out. I'm also going to try and read the planets more and get myself on a few. Not sure if there are enough bloggers in our LUG, but maybe a planet GCLUG might happen (or Planet Gold Coast? Or is that too broad). I was also enlightened as to what goatse is amongst other things. I can't believe I missed all that (probably for the best). Anyway - nice curry at Union house - can't believe I missed that place all week (I'm an unobservant fellow sometimes).
After lunch I went to the NFS talk and then puppet which was another one I had flagged for a while. It was great to see Luke (author of puppet) and learn about some of his motivations and plans for the tool. A lot of newbies to puppet in the room by the sound of the questions.... I hope this brings on a lot more contributors, I am going to try to contribute to the project more. Also met James Turnbull who has just written a book about puppet that will be on my next Amazon order I think.
Lightning talks and conference close were next. All good stuff, similar to OSDC. Flame gave away some more stuff at the start, no Star Wars stuff this time (I got the AT-AT model at OSDC). Talks were good, I finally got to see Steve Ellis present something, even though short (he got the prize for shortest talk!) - as I missed every one of his talks during the week (Sorry Steve - I at least caught up with them on the plane). I sat right at the front, but was feeling very stuffy and tired by the conference close... note to organisers... airflow please!
Google Party next - I finally caught up with the other member of my LUG, Craig and had some good chats with a few people. Paul Eggleton had yet another PDA/phone - a Neo... so finally got to have a play with one of these. I don't think they are worth the money at the moment, despite cool value (also - phone doesn't work!) - but I'll look out for next version (with wireless).
I couldn't stay for the Open Day so flew out Saturday morning.... I've really enjoyed my time at LCA. Love Melbourne, weather was much nicer than last time I was here. I still like my QLD winters though - so I'm not tempted to move. Got to catch up on a few talks on video on the plane home and collect my thoughts... will be a very busy week next week.
Carla and Jaron (dressed in fully Wolves kit!) met me at the airport - Jaron looked like he'd grow another few inches and is talking much better - but I think a week away clouds your sense of perspective a little, so I've probably exagerated it in my head. I had a weekend of full-on daddy time ahead of me I suspect.
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