Once again, the Lambda Lounge did not disappoint.

This month’s mind-bending topics included Factor, presented by Kyle Cordes, and Perl 6/Parrot, presented by Charles Sharp. Both of these guys are great speakers, I make it a point not to miss their talks.

Appistry again very generously hosted the λ Lounge and supplied Fortel’s pizza and beverages.

Jim Brasunas took a few minutes to talk about ITEN, a non-profit group which helps support ventures and startups. I think everyone was surprised to hear that there are nearly 100 technology-related startups in the St. Louis area.

We’ve been really spoiled by some great presentations and great speakers, so I don’t know what I was thinking when I volunteered to speak about the Fan programming language in July. Tonight I took notes during both talks, and I think I’ve spotted a few patterns that help to make any programming language presentation better.

1. Go ahead and do a Hello World program, but…
2. …a fibonacci sequence program has emerged as a must-have. It’s like the new Hello World.
3. Keep things moving along. The slides/software can always be made available later or even made into handouts, as Kyle did.
4. I like to hear just enough background to get an appreciation of where the language is coming from. What persons are involved? What are they trying to accomplish? What (if any) languages preceeded this language? Kyle and Charles both struck just the right note here, imho.
5. How concise is the language? How productive does it make you?
6. What real-world projects/accomplishments are associated with this language?
7. What idioms are unique/advantageous in this language?

I’m very much looking forward to the language shootout next month, as I believe everyone is.