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The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

news.perlfoundation.org

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Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#11

Post by muyuu »

Loic wrote: post #10
muyuu wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python, Ruby and PHP are converging so much it's becoming totally pointless to keep up with more than one of those, other than availability of tools and runtimes. Looking forward to production-ready Perl 6.

And community . I am using both PHP and Python because of two widely different communities and approaches to solve problems. For example, Python is the language with the largest and most robust collection of scientific software bindings. Python users tend to take a bit more time to implement things, but they do it in a very robust way. Java is pushing a bit, but Python stays the king. On the other hand, for everythin…

I agree. It's partly what I meant by availability of tools. I actually didn't mean IDE (I'm a basic text editor / vi person), I meant codebase mostly, libraries and whatnot.

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#12

Post by smosher »

avar wrote: post #2

This is very nice. Between this and Booking.com's (disclaimer: I work there) €100,000 donation just over a month ago TPF is really getting on track for having large corporate sponsorship from organizations who recognize how valuable Perl is for their infrastructure. I talked to some of the TPF people at Booking.com's donation event and they expressed desires to have more paid-for developers working on the Perl 5 core…

By now Perl 6 is viewed as best an interesting research project by organizations using Perl 5 in production.

As a member of an organization using Perl 5 (among many other languages), I should probably speak up. Though we haven't donated many thousands to TPF, it may be worth noting that with a minimal set of modules, similar stability and performance guarantee within an order of magnitude Perl 5's, we would be using Perl 6 without question. (With that alone it wouldn't replace all of our Perl 5 code, but we would be using more Perl overall as a result.) In fact Niecza is temptingly close to that status at the moment if you factor interop into the equation.

We have a highly polyglot environment, so introducing a new language to that is something that can be taken in stride. I assume a lot of Perl 6 reluctance comes from unfamiliarity, but for us it's more a matter of overall reliability. I find Perl 6 is better able to represent program logic, and I am sure having it in our environment would improve prototyping and maintenance considerably.

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#13

Post by draegtun »

avar wrote: post #9
draegtun wrote: post #6

A few months ago there was this discussion on HN - Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult? ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3247925 ). Unfortunately Perl doesn't have a Sugar Daddy :( However it does have a few benevolent Uncles :) Here's the breakdown of the last 12 months contributions... $10,000 Jun 2011 Vienna.pm $10,000 Jul 2011 Booking.com $10,000 Jul 2011 cPanel €100,000 Jan 2012 Booking.com $1…

Booking.com contributed €100k, not $100k. €100k =~ $130k. So the total for the last 12 months is around $260k, not $230k.

Have amended.

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#14

Post by [deleted] »

adam-_- wrote: post #8
draegtun wrote: post #6

A few months ago there was this discussion on HN - Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult? ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3247925 ). Unfortunately Perl doesn't have a Sugar Daddy :( However it does have a few benevolent Uncles :) Here's the breakdown of the last 12 months contributions... $10,000 Jun 2011 Vienna.pm $10,000 Jul 2011 Booking.com $10,000 Jul 2011 cPanel €100,000 Jan 2012 Booking.com $1…

Hard to find, unfortunately, but NET-A-PORTER (disclaimer: I work there) also donated $10,000. As well as LOVEFiLM, Oslo.pm, and Dijkmat donating various amounts. Source: http://www.perlfoundation.org/previous_homepage_news

[deleted]

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#15

Post by andrewvc »

smosher wrote: post #12
avar wrote: post #2

This is very nice. Between this and Booking.com's (disclaimer: I work there) €100,000 donation just over a month ago TPF is really getting on track for having large corporate sponsorship from organizations who recognize how valuable Perl is for their infrastructure. I talked to some of the TPF people at Booking.com's donation event and they expressed desires to have more paid-for developers working on the Perl 5 core…

By now Perl 6 is viewed as best an interesting research project by organizations using Perl 5 in production. As a member of an organization using Perl 5 (among many other languages), I should probably speak up. Though we haven't donated many thousands to TPF, it may be worth noting that with a minimal set of modules, similar stability and performance guarantee within an order of magnitude Perl 5's, we would be using…

Here's the question I have.

Perl5 -> Perl6 is not a natural progression. It's such a radically different language that going to say Python or Ruby is nearly as similar a change. Why's it obvious to you guys?

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#16

Post by wicket232 »

andrewvc wrote: post #15
smosher wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By now Perl 6 is viewed as best an interesting research project by organizations using Perl 5 in production. As a member of an organization using Perl 5 (among many other languages), I should probably speak up. Though we haven't donated many thousands to TPF, it may be worth noting that with a minimal set of modules, similar stability and performance guarantee within an order of magnitude Perl 5's, we would be using…

Here's the question I have. Perl5 -> Perl6 is not a natural progression. It's such a radically different language that going to say Python or Ruby is nearly as similar a change. Why's it obvious to you guys?

Perl 6 is still "Perlish", in the sense of TIMTOWTDI and DWIMmy-ness. However, after playing around with Perl 6 a little bit, I'm not convinced that it keeps Perl 5's practical simplicity.

I suspect that there's a whole crowd of Perl 5 lovers who just want something practical and simple -- they want a cleaned-up Perl 5 -- and they're scratching their heads wondering why the 6ers are spending so much time working on advanced features.

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#17

Post by jzawodn »

draegtun wrote: post #6

A few months ago there was this discussion on HN - Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult? ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3247925 ). Unfortunately Perl doesn't have a Sugar Daddy :( However it does have a few benevolent Uncles :) Here's the breakdown of the last 12 months contributions... $10,000 Jun 2011 Vienna.pm $10,000 Jul 2011 Booking.com $10,000 Jul 2011 cPanel €100,000 Jan 2012 Booking.com $1…

That earlier discussion is part of what sparked this (craigslist) donation, FWIW. (I work there)

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#19

Post by berntb »

soapdog wrote: post #18

On a related topic, can someone recommend a good book for learning perl these days? I never learned it and think it is a good skill.

I'm fond of the "Modern Perl" book, but you should have programming background for that. You won't go wrong by buying brian d foy's books either.

(Best is probably to ask at PerlMonks.org what to read.)

Edit: My best advice for a newbie is to get the Cookbook after the first basics. The Perl one is really helpful.

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#20

Post by smosher »

andrewvc wrote: post #15
smosher wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By now Perl 6 is viewed as best an interesting research project by organizations using Perl 5 in production. As a member of an organization using Perl 5 (among many other languages), I should probably speak up. Though we haven't donated many thousands to TPF, it may be worth noting that with a minimal set of modules, similar stability and performance guarantee within an order of magnitude Perl 5's, we would be using…

Here's the question I have. Perl5 -> Perl6 is not a natural progression. It's such a radically different language that going to say Python or Ruby is nearly as similar a change. Why's it obvious to you guys?

We have some Python code kicking around, but it hasn't penetrated our codebase very much, and in fact has never made itself integral. We have one very small yet important tool that had an implementation in Python but it was eventually rewritten. While has always been a very important tool, it was never a service. We've never (to the best of my knowledge) had Python in any of our server code, it just hasn't come to pass.

As for Ruby, I think the closest we came was a Redmine install. I don't have enough experience with Ruby to pass any judgments, but to me it feels like a poor compromise between some other languages. I don't think I'd mind replacing our use of PHP with it but it would be a harder sell than I would be in for and it simply wouldn't be worth it, considering the value of homogeneity within the existing PHP projects (or alternatively, the cost of rewrites.) Besides, I see no reason to avoid Perl here, virtually all of the PHP is database driven... DBI is just phenomenal.

Even though we're willing to take on another language it still must be justified. I suppose I have to answer the real question now. My answer is: I don't know about 'progression' (there's certainly a discontinuity) but I think Perl 6 is a natural evolution of Perl—not specifically Perl 5, but a truly 100% organic product of Perl culture. It also has some specific enhancements that solve real problems I have identified in our code which wouldn't be possible without a break of some kind.

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