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Learn how OCLC is helping to open the “black box” -- and give libraries the freedom to become true partners in the evolution of their library systems.
== Code inheritance; or, The Ghosts of Perls Past ===
* Jon Gorman, University of Illinois, jtgorman@illinois.ed
Any organization has a history not found in its archives or museums. Mysteries exist that origins are lost to the collective institutional knowledge. Despite what has been forgotten by humans, our servers and computers still keep running. Instructions crafted long ago execute like digital ghosts following orders of masters who have long since left.
The University of Illinois has a fair amount of Perl code created by several different developers. This code includes software that handles our data feeds coming both in and out of campus, reports against our Voyager system, some web applications, and more.
I'll touch a little on the historical legacy and why Perl is used. From there I'll share some tips, best practices, and some of the mistakes I've made in trying to maintain this code. Most of the advice will transition to any language, but code and libraries discussed will be Perl. The presentation will also touch on some internal debate on whether or not to port parts of our Perl codebase.
[[Category: Code4Lib2012]]