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Tim Maher gave a presentation on
Minimal Perl at OSCON 2005.

In a talk entitled A Minimal Perl Dialect for UNIX & Linux People, Tim began by stating that Perl is a great language, but because of its complexity, many newbies strive to simplify their learning experience by focusing on familiar elements of Perl that are derived from its UNIX, Shell, and AWK origins.
Just as landscape architects would be wise to pave the footpaths created spontaneously by pedestrians, Tim feels that professional Perl educators should help newbies by teaching custom Perl dialects to them, which he has been doing for Fortune 500 clients since 2000.
Tim's new book, Minimal Perl for UNIX & Linux People uses these techniques to help UNIX/Linux users and programmers learn Perl more quickly and easily, and have more fun with it.

PRESENTATION MATERIALS

A Minimal Perl Dialect for UNIX & Linux People

(updated) PDF File

Tim Maher gave a seminar on Minimal Perl
to the Portland Linux Users Group at Portland State University

	In a 2.5 hour seminar entitled Minimal Perl for UNIX & Linux People, Part 1: For Users, Tim showed PLUG members how to capitalize on their existing knowledge of grep, sed, and awk to easily begin writing powerful filter programs in Perl, as detailed in Tim's book.
PRESENTATION MATERIALS	Minimal Perl for UNIX and Linux People, Part 1: for Users (updated) PDF File

Tim Maher Taught Perl at
LinuxFest Northwest 2003

	Tim Maher shared Perl programming tips from his upcoming Manning Publications book on Perl at LinuxFest Northwest in April. He gave a short talk which is not available for download, but the following two-part 3-hour tutorial of the same title from YAPC::NA 2003 is even better:
PRESENTATION MATERIALS	Five Perl Commands that Every UNIX/Linux User Should Know PDF File Minimal Perl for Shell Users and Programmers See materials from YAPC::NA below

Tim Spoke on Perl at YAPC::NA 2003

In June at Boca Raton Florida, Consultix CEO Tim Maher presented several technical talks at the YAPC::NA 2003 Perl conference. One showed attendees how to use his new Perl module, Shell::POSIX::Select, that uses source filtering to implement the select loop of the UNIX shells (that's the only loop missing from Perl -- until now!). The significance of that module is that Shell-aware Perl Programmers can now write menu-oriented programs as easily in Perl as in the Shell, and Perl programmers no longer have to envy the select loop of their Shell-programming colleagues. He also gave a 5-minute Lighting Talk on this module, which was just a severely abbreviated version of the 45-minute session on the same topic, so only the longer talk is provided by the link below.

Tim also gave a half-day tutorial called Minimal Perl for Shell Users and Programmers, featuring excerpts from his upcoming Manning Publications book of the same title.

He also presented a humorous "Lighting Talk" on the history to date of SPUG (the Seattle Perl Users Group), which reveals the heretofore secret reason why SPUG is the biggest Perl group in the New World!

PRESENTATION MATERIALS

Minimal Perl for Shell Users and Programmers, Part I
Perl One-Liners that beat Grep, Sed, and AWK
- (updated) PDF File
Minimal Perl for Shell Users and Programmers, Part II
Perl Scripts that beat Grep, Sed, and AWK
- (updated) PDF File
Shell::POSIX::Select
A module that implements the Shell's select loop through source-code filtering
- (updated) PDF File

Tim Chaired Panel on Perl Certification at OSCON's Perl Conference v7.0

As a former University professor of Computer Science and software trainer for over two decades, Tim is very interested in education and testing technologies, so he convened a panel of assorted Perl luminaries including Damian Conway in a discussion of the ever-controversial issue of Certification for Perl Programmers.

The overwhelming majority of those voting by a show of hands were in favor of creating a certification process for Perl, and discussions about how to proceed with that mandate are taking place at the Perl Certification Kwiki site and mailing list.

You can download Tim's article on Perl Certification that appeared in the October 2003 Perl Journal for free.