What’s so great about CPAN anyway? • Hacker News Board

Re: What’s so great about CPAN anyway?

#21

Post by jrockway » Fri, Feb 18, 2011, 2:12 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #20

jrockway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, people stopped writing logging frameworks years ago. Even Log4Perl and Log::Dispatch interoperate now. The cool new thing is web frameworks. But of course, due to PSGI, those all work together too! "There's more than one way to do it", but at least you can deploy them all to production in the same way. As for bugs; trust me, people reply to them. Take a look at how many Moose bugs are "resolved", for example: htt…

Stopped? Years ago? Log::Fine (2008), Amphibic::Log (2010), Su::Log (2011), Easy::Log (2007), Log::Smart (2007), Log::Deep (2009), Util::Thread::Logger (2011), ... I won't even mention all the one-module-specific mini-logging scripts which do it yet another way.

Who cares? So one guy posts his code to the Internet for people to look at, and there are a lot of one guys. What's the solution to this "problem"?

Re: What’s so great about CPAN anyway?

#22

Post by igneous4 » Fri, Feb 18, 2011, 4:01 AM UTC

draegtun wrote: post #13

danssig wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's great about Perl is that you are forced to use very few of these modules That sort of kills the claim that perl is great because of the size of CPAN, no?

Nope. Its darwinian, the more modules in the gene pool means newer/better solutions need to fight harder to survive & win. So the outcome is often better for Perl/CPAN, for eg. Moose

> Its darwinian

I think you're correct, but that there are trade-offs. Take Python, for example. They have "batteries included", and when modules make it into the std lib, they pretty much stop evolving. However, on the up-side, Python gains users who like having everything packaged up nice and neat so they don't need to go looking for modules quite as much.

Perl takes the popularity hit of not having too many batteries included, but benefits from the darwinian element that works to make the 3rd-party modules better. So, perlers need to spend more time asking around (or checking cpanratings), and also dealing with it when there's turnover (the module that they chose a few years ago is eclipsed by a competitor, or stops being maintained, and now they need to rewrite some of their code).

In the end, I think Perl has better modules.

Re: What’s so great about CPAN anyway?

#23

Post by draegtun » Fri, Feb 18, 2011, 10:43 AM UTC

danssig wrote: post #19

draegtun wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly darwinism hasn't made trolls extinct yet :) Based on your comments here and the fact you're a newly created account then I am going to have to make the assumption that trolls do indeed exist among us :(

You seriously think I made this account just to troll you? Talk about defensive.

You seriously think I made this account just to troll you?

Of course not, that is just an assumption of yours ;-)

Seriously though I do feel your comments have had a troll tone and my previous statement was half in jest. So I do apologise sincerely if you have taken offence to it.

So again sorry and welcome aboard HN.

Re: What’s so great about CPAN anyway?

#24

Post by draegtun » Fri, Feb 18, 2011, 10:56 AM UTC

igneous4 wrote: post #22

draegtun wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Its darwinian, the more modules in the gene pool means newer/better solutions need to fight harder to survive & win. So the outcome is often better for Perl/CPAN, for eg. Moose

> Its darwinian I think you're correct, but that there are trade-offs. Take Python, for example. They have "batteries included", and when modules make it into the std lib, they pretty much stop evolving. However , on the up-side, Python gains users who like having everything packaged up nice and neat so they don't need to go looking for modules quite as much. Perl takes the popularity hit of not having too many batte…

Yes i've touched briefly on CPAN vs stdlib approach before (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2088040). They're just different approaches and neither is better or worse than the other.

BTW... I believe all language repos will have darwinism acting upon it. I see it in Ruby & Python as well as on CPAN. Its Perl philosophy and CPAN size that just stirs the pot a bit more!

Re: What’s so great about CPAN anyway?

#25

Post by draegtun » Fri, Feb 18, 2011, 11:26 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #20

jrockway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, people stopped writing logging frameworks years ago. Even Log4Perl and Log::Dispatch interoperate now. The cool new thing is web frameworks. But of course, due to PSGI, those all work together too! "There's more than one way to do it", but at least you can deploy them all to production in the same way. As for bugs; trust me, people reply to them. Take a look at how many Moose bugs are "resolved", for example: htt…

Stopped? Years ago? Log::Fine (2008), Amphibic::Log (2010), Su::Log (2011), Easy::Log (2007), Log::Smart (2007), Log::Deep (2009), Util::Thread::Logger (2011), ... I won't even mention all the one-module-specific mini-logging scripts which do it yet another way.

I suppose its another rite of passage like making template modules/frameworks which you see in abundance in all language repos :)

Re: What’s so great about CPAN anyway?

#26

Post by wazoox » Fri, Feb 18, 2011, 12:56 PM UTC

ffffruit wrote: post #7

I use Perl every day in product/home and have contributed numerous modules on CPAN. The "Ratings" argument is very very thin. Yes, CPAN does have a ratings system ; nobody uses it. Even very very popular and well-written modules, for example Data::Dumper, have below 10 ratings.

Yes, the problem with the ratings is that it necessitates a bitcard account, alas. Would it be more open, there could be many more ratings.