Last year Cluj Napoca was the lucky host of YAPC::EU 2016, more than 300 Perl Mongers came down, took in the transylvanian vibe and enjoyed all things Perl. It was great being host, but we were excited to attend the Perl conference in Amsterdam.
This lovely event, formerly known as YAPC, was the yearly meeting of Perl Mongers in Europe. Evozon is a Perl company in a relationship with this technology for more than a decade now so we couldn’t miss it. Three of our Perl developers, Mihai, Stefan and Florentina attended the Perl Conference in Amsterdam. Without further ado let’s get into it.
Day 1
Mihai
Rainy tough morning after the pre-conference meeting with a couple of free drinks, but we already knew our way to the event, so we got there in due time to Damian Conway’s keynote, which was really awesome. Interesting talks about some Middleware modules and unit testing, so it was a good day and the weather turned better too by the end of it. However, me and Stefan bought a TPC hoodie, as we only took summer clothes with us.
Stefan
I liked the fact that they had pre-conference meetings the previous day so we could check out the location and check in. When it comes to talks I really like the Three Little Words, and 20 years of Perl, this one gave an insight about how YAPC was created/raised and its evolution over the years. I also like the special event after the first day talks.
Florentina
It was so nice to meet again with so many Perl people in the community. The location was great and we were excited for the talks. For me, on the first day, the best presentation was Damian Conway – Three Little Words.
In the evening we attend a Perl party sponsored by Booking.
Day 2
Mihai
This was probably the best conference day in terms of content, as we listened to all the guest speakers outside Europe: Brian D Foy had another good talk, as well as Damian Conway. People really bursted into laugh at Damian’s funny French accent during his presentation with many side dev jokes. We convinced Damian to switch his talk he was going to have at our own Cluj.PM and hold this one instead and he agreed, so I guess that was the highlight of the day.
Stefan
Probably the best presentation I have attended (not just in this edition of TPC) was Damian Conway’s The Shoulders Of Giants: 400 Years Of Perl 6. I also got to see it again at our Cluj.pm meeting, and I was still impressed the second time around. But this is not all, another good presentation was Mapping World Literature. It was about an application that gives geodata about every found/parsed book from a specific internet set (growing).
The food at the conference could have been better as every day they had the same 2, 3 types of sandwiches.
After the conference we visited the Amsterdam City Center.
Florentina
It was just nice to start the day with Larry Wall, it doesn’t matter how many times you see his talks, there’s still a great feeling there. The most memorable talk was Damian Conway’s – The Shoulders Of Giants: 400 Years Of Perl 6.
Day 3
Mihai
We found out from Saywer X what is new in Perl 5.26, him being the head of release this time. He also compared to the other cool stuff release in all the versions from 5.20 till now, so it was a good journey between Perl latest versions. I also liked the talks about Docker and how other people use it for deployment, which inspired me to have a talk of my own at the Cluj.PM meeting, as we are also using Docker for deployment on the Perl project where I work.
Stefan
We learned a few things about Perl 5.26 in Perl 5.26 and the Blue-Blue Shiny Ball of Eternal Transparency, but more than that, it was a very good talk on the differences between the different Perl 5 versions. This was our second day visiting Amsterdam, and I can safely say that it’s in my top two best cities that I have ever visited. It deserved a longer trip, and I think in the future I’ll definitely go back. It has good public transportation, a nice city center and a lot of tourist attractions.
Florentina
It’s always nice to hear Sawyer, he’s a very good speaker, keeps you interested and involved.
Needless to say he was also very informative and thorough in his talk. We also visited the center of Amsterdam, a very nici city.
Bottom line
Mihai
Overall it was a well-organized YAPC, content-wise was really worth it, and also Amsterdam was a great city to visit. I had never been to Amsterdam before, so I was really impressed with all my experience there.
Stefan
There were some great talks at the conference, we had a very good hotel – not far from the center and also a very memorable Amsterdam experience. We visited a few tourist objectives, they were pretty close together, but we also missed quite a few, because of time restrictions. It’s one of the best cities I have ever visited and I’ll go back soon.
Florentina
A very nice experience, wonderful hotel, nice people from all around the world, good talks and an impressive city.
By Mihai Pop, Stefan Iloaie, Florentina Borse and Samuel Andras
