81–90 of 213 posts
As a duckduckgo user, I think this is great. FWIW, Perl is still on my list to learn :) edit: fixed spelling
Perl is maybe the most enjoyable language I've ever coded in up until I'm forced to read someone else's code which is always hellish.
A: This is great! Perl is much maligned but a fantastic Swiss army chainsaw and still runs so much critical infrastructure. B: I find it concerning that $25k is a notable donation; is the Foundation doing that poorly? I would have hoped this number to have two more digits in it for it to be a front page worthy item.
Many of the big Perl names long moved on; CPAN is full of abandoned modules. And the world doesn't sit still.
So as time goes by, there's more and more risk of you finding out that some Perl module you're using no longer works. It may not build because of API changes in the C library, or the API of some web service changed, or there isn't an API at all for some pretty big thing that showed up 3 years ago.
That didn't use to be the case.
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?
> [...] asking why they used Perl, and he responded back, which was nice of him. Do you still know what the reason was?
Here's what I sent:
Hello!
I don't have a lot to say to you, but I just wanted to say that about a month ago, I started the transition away from Google, and the most obvious thing to switch was search.
DuckDuckGo has improved substantially since the last time I used it (around 2012), and it's to a point where the results are comparable, and sometimes even better than Google, so changing was pretty seamless. Now the only Google-thing I need to remove from my life is YouTube.
As a somewhat technical person, I was curious about one thing; I saw that the primary language for DuckDuckGo is Perl. Without making any judgement here, was there a particular reason for that choice? Also, are you planning to move to Perl 6?
Anyway, I appreciate you reading my email. DuckDuckGo is a great service, and I hope you guys keep up the good work!
-Thomas Gebert.
Yes, though, the primary language is Perl. It was out of convenience and interest since that was my primary language when I started the project. There was/are a lot of libraries useful for text processing / web crawling. Now Python and other libraries have been similarly built up.Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because people using your software doesn’t cost you anything. Tell me you've never been an open source maintainer without telling me you've never been an open source maintainer. :)
I've been an open source maintainer (and still am to a smaller degree) and I think sneak is right. I'm happy for people to use things I create and release, and their use doesn't impose costs on me.
Where do you draw the line between extending your project and providing free labor to a for-profit company?
Fixing bugs is less controversial, while finding solutions to issues arising in bespoke production environments, with short deadlines, is grueling work for which companies are usually gladly purchasing support contract. Where is the line past which you ask for money, and are you really fine helping a company avoid lawsuits and brand damage after they neglect updates for years, with no gratitude from their side? Case in point: log4shell in late 2021
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of companies are kind of realising the tech stack they use has a bigger impact on hiring than salaries. I believe banks are encountering this issue with no one wanting to do C++ anymore.
You'd find a lot of talented C++ engineers for the right mission and culture. The problem you describe has little to do with C++ and a lot to do with banking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been an open source maintainer (and still am to a smaller degree) and I think sneak is right. I'm happy for people to use things I create and release, and their use doesn't impose costs on me.
Tech support still takes time.
(Or, when at one point I had a job as an open source developer, to the extent that I thought it would improve our software.)
A: This is great! Perl is much maligned but a fantastic Swiss army chainsaw and still runs so much critical infrastructure. B: I find it concerning that $25k is a notable donation; is the Foundation doing that poorly? I would have hoped this number to have two more digits in it for it to be a front page worthy item.
I'm surprised to learn that Perl is still used. Obviously there will always be legacy code to maintain but these days I can't even remember the last time Perl was mentioned in casual conversation amongst my peers unless we're sharing war stories from the 90s. These days when we find ourselves needing to write a script our first go-to would be bash, and if we need more features or if it's going to be complex enough to…
For this year's London Perl & Raku workshop I shortlisted 70 companies to look for sponsorship. That was with minimal research and effort. These ranged from long term ("legacy") users of Perl to startups. From small companies to very large and profitable fintechs. I cover this briefly in the talk I gave at the end of the workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el7qHRpEDeE
Yes, there is far less Perl than there was 20 years ago. But Perl was everywhere at one point, and the halflife of programming languages is long so it's still in a lot of places. Programming languages don't die, they just stop being talked about in favour of the shiny new ones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do they owe anything today, in the sense of a legal obligation? No. But we've regulated the tragedy of the commons in all sorts of other instances. There's no reason, for example, that a small percentage of corporate income tax couldn't be allocated to a grant program for free and open source software projects.
That's a good thought in isolation. The problem however is how are you going to ensure the money collected for that purpose go to the projects that actually need it and there wont be any corruption involved? It isn't hard to notice, for example, that in EU where gamedev companies often receive grants for various nebulous reasons tend to be companies that do not need the money in the first place (and yes, of course th…
We manage to do this within other fields of endeavor, at least in the United States, by using an intermediary. Examples: National Science Foundation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of companies are kind of realising the tech stack they use has a bigger impact on hiring than salaries. I believe banks are encountering this issue with no one wanting to do C++ anymore.
You'd find a lot of talented C++ engineers for the right mission and culture. The problem you describe has little to do with C++ and a lot to do with banking.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still use craigslist and haven't actually done anything with facebook marketplace yet. That makes me want to delete my facebook account (something I've been considering anyway) just to nip that possibility in the bud.
If you’re trying to sell something, you need to be where the customers are. If they’re on Marketplace, that’s where you go. You can easily list in both places.