[alaxsxaq]

It is an interesting thought. I went to one of the early OSCON conferences in Portland and it was pretty cool to have the Ruby (Matts), Python (Guido), and Perl (Larry Wall) people all at the same conference. I was a budding Python programmer, but sat through sessions on the other languages to get a feel for what they offered.

That was a great conference - amazing attendees spending the evening hanging out around the conference center hacking code and an amazing diversity of presenters.

I go to OSCON often and that atmosphere has never been repeated as things have splintered off into language/application area specific conferences. Something's been lost - at least for the casual or beginner programmer.