All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Perl Teaching

Simon on 2002-05-14T11:54:15

No. I got woken up by a phone call this morning. "You're teaching a Perl course 15 minutes ago".

After getting out of bed, sprinting to work, turning up with no course accounts set up on the Unix server for the users, and no slides, I ad-libbed for 3 hours. And it worked.

Competence trumps slack, every time.

Nearly bt,dt

gnat on 2002-05-14T15:32:41

You can't rely on it. In my experience, improv has worked sometimes and failed others. A lot of it depends on your audience's ability to get into the idea that you're making it up and WOW, aren't you cool?! If they look at you coldly and you can feel the "this fuckwit isn't worth whatever we're paying him" vibe radiating off them, then you're doomed.

And yes, I do have a couple of classes I taught in mind :-)

Ultimately I came to realize that comedy and quick thinking are no substitute for preparation and professionalism.

--Nat