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DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

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Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#191

Post by that_guy_iain »

pjmlp wrote: post #162
that_guy_iain wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure you understand the problem. Your first sentence hints that you know that there needs to be other things than tech stack and salary to find talented C++ programmers. But the second sentence pretends like you didn't write the first sentence. I said tech stack affects hiring more than salary. I didn't say there is a lack of C++ programmers. I was very explicit about my statement.

Have done consulting with banks as customers, I definitly wouldn't want to work for one, regardless of the tech stack, and money being offered. This is what OP was hinting at.

OP was ignoring the point and basically implied the reason banks have issues hiring these days is because they're banks. While in the past they didn't have these issues. Why? Because tech stack matters for a lot of people.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#192

Post by creer »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #71
myrmidon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding B: This tracks with what I've observed in this regard, namely that sponsoring by companies just doesn't work well as business model even for projects where you would assume that it should. The incentives are just not working out, and it seems impossible to mobilize even a fraction of the sums for OSS-donations than what companies burn for much less critical aspects of their operation than OSS tools/librarie…

Most big open-source projects are a thing because a companies invest in it. When we rely on people doing it in their free time what we see is unmaintained software. The entire idea that open source is volunteer work is largely a myth when it comes to popular open source. Even the ones where you think it's volunteer work they do so much during their working hours that either they're lying to their employer or it's spo…

Isn't it both? In particular dependent on the size of the project?

And it's still easy for individuals to at least contribute detailed problem reports even to very large projects. And these are useful. Even when ignored by the lead mafia.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#193

Post by [deleted] »

jimmaswell wrote: post #47
esaym wrote: post #21

Craigslist used to donate over $100,000 every single year. Not sure when that stopped. That is really what kept perl going between the years of 2010 and 2016 or so. The board was actually paying a couple of people to do maintenance on the core repository and code. I believe they still do that but obviously due to deficits that is going to get difficult. It's sad when so many companies are dependent upon perl, but don…

I miss Craigslist, seems like everyone moved over to Facebook Marketplace a few years ago.

[deleted]

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#194

Post by creer »

miroljub wrote: post #35
dtquad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of talented developers in Eastern Europe who are $25k or cheaper.

Good luck finding just one talented developer in Eastern Europe willing to work for 25k or cheaper. Thanks to globalisation, those times are long gone. Any mediocre developer can find a local employer that pays at least that much.

Projects don't often demand full time work. A quarter-time work from an effective developper is a lot of work.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#195

Post by creer »

_swfb wrote: post #40

I always forget that DDG is written with Perl, even after I emailed yegg a million years ago asking why they used Perl, and he responded back, which was nice of him. I hear Raku is fun, I haven't used it, but I sort of swore a soft oath that I would never touch Perl again about a decade ago after having to debug some regex magic someone did. I'm assuming that once you get past the "hump", Perl becomes fun?

raku is amazing. It's perl to the power of perl. Which is why I adopted it. I used perl for its power and expressiveness, and for its layering (never having to learn the entire language at once: one feature at a time is fine). Raku does not disappoint and is a stellar successor (and I'll never know the whole thing :-).

Regarding your oath, it's been 10 years and perhaps you are better now at learning language features. Raku's documentation is very good ... but a very different format that perl. And raku doubled down on regex documentation and structuring ideas (which are completely applicable to refactoring somebody else's regex). And the usual forums are excellent at helping with raku questions.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#196

Post by creer »

SushiHippie wrote: post #122
_swfb wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually more recent than I thought, looks like it was 2018. I would have sworn it was earlier but I can see the "sent" timestamp on ProtonMail.

2018 is still a long time ago, so that's totally understandable haha Thank you!

Always makes me laugh when I read things like "2018 is still a long time ago" (no offense or downvote). But also the very thing that perl fought against. Your programming is not going to break for a long time (much longer than 6 years) because there is no reason for language features to change that quickly - certainly compsci theory does not change anywhere that fast.

It takes time to build very large projects like a large, layered programming language, and it should be normal to take many years to learn all the features of something like perl or raku. Because there should be no reason to do it all at once rather than be productive in the meantime.

So anyway, 6 years should not be much in the career of a programming language.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#197

Post by creer »

cafard wrote: post #98
gertlex wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious: do you also do script-writing in other languages? And just pull out perl for a subset of problems? Or are most things at the "bigger than a script" level for you? I'm not here to judge. I still prefer to write my python scripts like it's the 2.7 days... (more effort goes to python "code")

Generally, if the script is more than a one-off, I will write in Python, since all the young seem to know Python, and very few seem to know Perl. There are two recurring jobs that I have not rewritten from Perl, one because "pack" is so handy. The only other language I use much for scripting is Javascript, or rather Jscript, for our accounting department sometimes needs files munged for integration into Great Plains,…

Do most of them even "know python" or just the crudest parts of python?

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#198

Post by pjmlp »

sneak wrote: post #186
pjmlp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem, for some, is that they believed the dream it is possible to make a living out of free software. They forgot to read the footnote on how it actually works in capitalist and money driven societies.

I make a good living only writing public domain software. Most of it is never published to the web.

I wonder how it plays out in money that comes in, and money that goes into the authors of the public domain tools that get used, and make this all possible.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#199

Post by pjmlp »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #191
pjmlp wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have done consulting with banks as customers, I definitly wouldn't want to work for one, regardless of the tech stack, and money being offered. This is what OP was hinting at.

OP was ignoring the point and basically implied the reason banks have issues hiring these days is because they're banks. While in the past they didn't have these issues. Why? Because tech stack matters for a lot of people.

They always had these issues, I barely know anyone that freely replied to job interviews for a bank, given the work environment, as I am approaching 50y, have already seen quite a lot in consulting projects.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#200

Post by bigiain »

graemep wrote: post #102
nu11ptr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. This new trend of maintaining or starting an open source project and then getting upset when people don't send you money is seriously weird. If you want compensation, start a company, otherwise consider anything you receive a gift.

You can also do things like dual licensing. GPL or Affero GPL plus proprietary license. Of course this puts off outside contributors so not if you want a "bazaar" development mode—but people complaining about this are usually not doing so.

Perl might have been the original dual license. GPL or Perl Artistic license.

I remember learning about Affero at a Perl Conference in the late 90's or so.

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