The Perl classes went really well. Everyone has been complimenting me on them ever since we wrapped up the last session (wow, was it really two months ago?).
Last month, I was given a $100 bonus and a framed certificate of achievement that reads: 'This certificate is awarded to Matt Musgrove in recognition for successfully instructing four Perl Training Sessions, and receiving an overall, "EXCELLENT" rating for understanding participant needs, demonstrating genuine interest in the learners, and providing valuable job-based training. THANK YOU!!'.
Last week, one of the guys that was in my class came over to ask about a text processing script that was taking many, many hours to complete (upwards of 8 hours if I remember correctly). He explained that the files were read into the database, the data was processed and then the data was being written out to different files. The database was only being used to store the information while it was munged. He said that he thought that it could be done quicker in Perl using hashes instead of the database processing that it was using. I said that more than likely it would be much quicker but he should benchmark it to be sure. Today, he came back to report the results. The Perl script totally blows away the old solution. I don't remember the specifics but it now only takes about 1.5 hours to process all of the files. He's extremely happy with his new understanding of Perl.
The coworker that sits across from me (a Perl guy) told me that he keeps hearing people around the office saying stuff like "oh, you should write that in Perl" or "Perl is the way to go for that problem". Very cool.
