I said before I wanted to become a writer. I guess I'm pretty late to realize that. I'm 29 now, been in economics and computer science, had my own consultancy company and am currently Yet Another Employee at a large Dutch webdesign bureau. It's not that I don't like it there, nice cow-orkers, good bosses (2 in fact) who are pretty good in coaching, but there's something I'm missing. I miss the freedom I had when I ran my own business. I miss the challenge of exploring New Mysteries of Perl. I don't learn anything new and I can't decide for myself in which direction I should go.
I don't have the illusion I can make a living writing articles and books. I think however that I can extend that feeling I get when I'm writing things by giving Perl training. I've hardly come across any Perl training in the Netherlands, so it might be an idea to become a freelance Perl trainer. Then again, maybe there is a reason why there are so few Perl trainings in the Netherlands. Maybe there's no market...
Anyway, one of these days I'll get my definitive answer from Manning whether or not they want to publish my book about GUI Programming with Perl. I wish there was a way to speed up things and get an answer now, but there isn't.
My first (non-technical) article is now finished and will be published on Perl.com. It's a review of YAPC::Europe and will be put online this week. I'm really excited about it! I immediately took my chance asking Simon Cozens if he would be interested in a series of articles about wxPerl and Win32::GUI that I'm writing anyway, because that's (I think) a good way to research the topics before writing the book. I was already busy writing my "wxPerl: first steps" when I asked Simon. He was enthousiastic! He didn't know about wxPerl, but had heard of wxWindows and wished he knew about it earlier.
That really motivated me more to go on with the article. I have just finished three little sample scripts that show step by step how to create a wxPerl application.
wxPerl is really different. It's not comparable with Tk or Gtk, because the way of writing an application is totally different. In Tk and Gtk you define a window, draw widgets on it and start the mainloop. Admitted: they have their own syntax, but Tk and Gtk are fairly similar.
wxPerl on the contrary lets you create a new class that is inherited from Wx::App and lets you extend that. A more Java- or C++ like way of working. Do you want to add a button or a label? Again, create a new derivate from an existing Frame-class, and extend it with that button and label.
It's different. But I'm getting used to it, and must say it feels good. It's more OO than Tk and Gtk.
Well, if I continue at this speed you'll probably read about it on Perl.com shortly!
