[SGVLUG] Hello from San Diego

[Dustin Laurence]

Hi, Luggers, I'm sitting in a hotel room playing with Dylan (a decent
candidate for most-forgotten good programming language) after the first
day of the Desktop Linux Summit instead of playing with my little boy,
so I thought I'd send a few quick thoughts.

This just happened to come at a time that was as good as SCALE's time
was bad for me, so I'm kind of here on a lark.  No agenda.

Between traffic and lack of sleep I was late--the Orange Crush was awful
this morning and I got a later start because I foolishly decided not to
go to bed until I got a Dylan-to-C compiler working and wrote "Hello
world."  Stupid stupid stupid.  That happened about suppertime in New
Zealand.  I know this because I had a Kiwi helping debug things.

I probably got the cheapest entry price of anyone (anyone not helping);
they had so much trouble processing my credit card that they finally let
me in for $10 cash.  I hope that wasn't Linux they were running, or
someone is due for a caning. :-)

The talks are interesting but not as much so as SCALE.  There are more
marketeers and fewer hackers, and the talks reflect that.  There is a
lot more Linspire (of course), Xandros, Mepis.  No Debian, Slackware,
Gentoo or any of the BSDs.  Different culture, and that's maybe worth
coming more than anything else.  It's always interesting to travel to
strange lands and study the native's incomprehensible customs. :-)

The interesting thing about the DLS is that it's the most nakedly
commercial Linux thing I've gone to--which isn't saying much, given that
I used to not go to Linux social events.  But if you went to SCALE, the
atmosphere is entirely different.  I'm not sure they realize *how*
different, but it is.  If SCALE is about enthusiasm for Linux, DLS is
about enthusiasm for Linux profits.

It makes sense when you think about who puts them on, right?  I could go
on, but you see the point.

Now to see if I can figure out enough string handling in Dylan to do a
bit of damage.

Dustin
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