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Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

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Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#31

Post by kemayo »

danssig wrote: post #28
jorgecastillo wrote: post #27

I am teaching myself C++ after this, I want to learn a scripting language. I think I will go for Perl, I want something like Perl because I feel(I don't know), that Perl will not be changing drastically in the following years, that the current userbase and available OSS code is huge and that this will not change any time soon. I also like OpenBSD and it has Perl by default. Anything I should be aware of?

If you want a scripting language you'll save yourself a lot of pain by starting with Python. It's also on OpenBSD isn't it? If not, I'm sure it's trivial to install it there.

That does run into his "will not be changing drastically in the following years" criteria a bit, though.

He can either learn Python 2, in which case he'll have to adjust to Python 3 when it takes off... or he can learn Python 3 and not (yet) have widespread library support.

Learning 2 and then moving to 3 whenever it takes off isn't really that much work, but I can totally understand it having a chilling effect on prospective learners.

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#32

Post by rjbond3rd »

danssig wrote: post #30
rjbond3rd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signs of what exactly? That people like to argue about languages? Or are you saying that choice of language / stack should be dictated by popular trends?

He's saying "The lady doth protest too much, methinks". You don't have this problem with Python, Ruby, C++ or even C. I certainly don't see a "C isn't dead! Really!" post every other week.

Oh please. The "is dead" meme is specific to Perl, but it's just a meme. There are plenty of equally dumb memes for Java, Lisp, and all the languages you just mentioned.

Please don't make the mistake of believing a meme.

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#33

Post by protomyth »

danssig wrote: post #28
jorgecastillo wrote: post #27

I am teaching myself C++ after this, I want to learn a scripting language. I think I will go for Perl, I want something like Perl because I feel(I don't know), that Perl will not be changing drastically in the following years, that the current userbase and available OSS code is huge and that this will not change any time soon. I also like OpenBSD and it has Perl by default. Anything I should be aware of?

If you want a scripting language you'll save yourself a lot of pain by starting with Python. It's also on OpenBSD isn't it? If not, I'm sure it's trivial to install it there.

Python is in the ports / packages for OpenBSD.

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#34

Post by phaylon »

jorgecastillo wrote: post #27

I am teaching myself C++ after this, I want to learn a scripting language. I think I will go for Perl, I want something like Perl because I feel(I don't know), that Perl will not be changing drastically in the following years, that the current userbase and available OSS code is huge and that this will not change any time soon. I also like OpenBSD and it has Perl by default. Anything I should be aware of?

If you want to experience a modern Perl, you can use perlbrew[1] to install it for your user only (e.g. you won't need to muck with the system's Perl), cpanm[2] is a modern and easy (and zero-configuration) tool for install modules from CPAN. MetaCPAN[3] is a modern browser for the CPAN archive. Task-*[4] collections are good for finding modules in the ecosystem related to a subcommunity or project. I think Task-Kensho[5] is a good collection of modern Perl modules to start out and try the language. To me, the most influential projects right now are Plack[6]/PSGI[7] and Moose[8].

Community-wise I'd keep an eye on the IronMan aggregator[9] and blogs.perl.org[10].

[1] https://metacpan.org/release/App-perlbrew [2] https://metacpan.org/release/App-cpanminus [3] https://metacpan.org/ [4] http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/search?query=Task-&mode=dist [5] https://metacpan.org/release/Task-Kensho [6] https://metacpan.org/release/Plack [7] https://metacpan.org/release/PSGI [8] https://metacpan.org/release/Moose [9] http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/ [10] http://blogs.perl.org/

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#35

Post by berntb »

danssig wrote: post #30
rjbond3rd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signs of what exactly? That people like to argue about languages? Or are you saying that choice of language / stack should be dictated by popular trends?

He's saying "The lady doth protest too much, methinks". You don't have this problem with Python, Ruby, C++ or even C. I certainly don't see a "C isn't dead! Really!" post every other week.

These "Perl is dead" posts seems to come from trolls from certain other language communities. And in many cases, it is the same persons writing them...

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#36

Post by hello_moto »

absconditus wrote: post #16
njl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The successor to Perl is Ruby. System administration used to mean Perl, now it means Ruby. Fast web development used to mean Perl, now it means Ruby or Python. The successor to Perl is Ruby.

I think that you are vastly overestimating Ruby's popularity outside of the HN crowd.

I'm not into the whole sys-admin thing or the Ruby hotness or the Node.JS hype but I noticed that there are more utilities or tools that are written in Ruby lately.

CloudFoundry seems to be written in Ruby and it looks like a bunch of sys-admin tools.

Chef, Puppet are both written in Ruby and utilized Ruby (or Ruby DSL?).

There's a strong push for Ruby lately and it might be because Ruby is kind of similar to Perl so some sys-admins are okay with that?

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#37

Post by berntb »

danssig wrote: post #21
bazquz wrote: post #3

Someone is going to say -- "perl ? Does any one use it ? I had to maintain a project in perl 6 years back and I absolutely hated it ..." Disregard him. He sucks candy. EDIT: The downvotes are acting a ( ) for all the candy suckers. Checkout their useless profiles, and memorize their silly nick's. ha ha !

Nice. You're so sensitive about perl you've actually preemptively trolled your own thread.

After one hour, you'we written 5 out of 34 comments dissing a language -- then you call others for troll?!

Look out for the sun, I hear it might give you a grayish complexion... :-)

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#38

Post by erikpukinskis »

ezyang wrote: post #2

There are two things here, one is lack of funding, and the other is lack of technical talent working on the project. To a certain degree the former can compensate for the latter, since if you're a company and you believe enough in your language to think that investing staff hours in improving it is a net-win for you, you'll do it. As it turns out, attracting and keeping technical talent is hard.

There seems to be something to this. Google didn't hire a random hacker to work on Python. Guido just couldn't not work on Python, and inevitably, if you are that kind of hacker, there's a company somewhere who benefits massively from having you in their office every day.

Who, besides Larry, can't drag themselves away from hacking on Perl? I'm assuming those people are all employed. If not, we should get them a job!

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#39

Post by draegtun »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #38
ezyang wrote: post #2

There are two things here, one is lack of funding, and the other is lack of technical talent working on the project. To a certain degree the former can compensate for the latter, since if you're a company and you believe enough in your language to think that investing staff hours in improving it is a net-win for you, you'll do it. As it turns out, attracting and keeping technical talent is hard.

There seems to be something to this. Google didn't hire a random hacker to work on Python. Guido just couldn't not work on Python, and inevitably, if you are that kind of hacker, there's a company somewhere who benefits massively from having you in their office every day. Who, besides Larry, can't drag themselves away from hacking on Perl? I'm assuming those people are all employed. If not, we should get them a job!

While they don't all work on the core, development on each perl release is very healthy. From Perl 5.14.0 release delta:

Perl 5.14.0 represents one year of development since Perl 5.12.0 and contains nearly 550,000 lines of changes across nearly 3,000 files from 150 authors and committers.

ref: https://metacpan.org/module/perl5140delta

And since the 5.14.0 release on 14th May this year development has continued unabated:

  Current release (5.14)

    * 5.14.1 on 2011-06-17
    * 5.14.2 on 2011-09-26

  Patch old release (5.12)

    * 5.12.4 on 2011-06-20

  Development for next release (5.16)

    * 5.15.0 on 2011-06-20
    * 5.15.1 on 2011-07-20
    * 5.15.2 on 2011-08-21
    * 5.15.3 on 2011-09-21
    * 5.15.4 on 2011-10-20
ref: Above dates from MetaCPAN and excludes release candidates versions.

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#40

Post by Mithaldu »

jorgecastillo wrote: post #27

I am teaching myself C++ after this, I want to learn a scripting language. I think I will go for Perl, I want something like Perl because I feel(I don't know), that Perl will not be changing drastically in the following years, that the current userbase and available OSS code is huge and that this will not change any time soon. I also like OpenBSD and it has Perl by default. Anything I should be aware of?

IMO the most important thing to be aware of is that There Is More Than One Way To Learn It: http://perl-tutorial.org
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