Re: New Module
* Jonathan Rockway j...@jrock.us [2009-05-03 08:00]: * On Sat, May 02 2009, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote: Yeah, if there are thousands of other programmers using a module, then its name can be pretty much anything. If more or less the only marketing it has is search.cpan.org results page, then most potential users will miss it unless its name is descriptive and based on keywords someone might actually use to search for something like it. This is why Perl people should blog more. Agreed, that helps up to a point. But you can’t natter on about *every* module at the same level of noise. Plus, the number of Perl programmers who don’t mingle with the community and won’t be reached by blog buzz dwarfs the community core; for them, only the slow trickle of mindshare among peers will work. (Actually, s/Perl// – it’s true of all programming communities.) But it’s them who give Perl coin in corporate environments, not the core community directly. Basically I think that irrespective of other marketing efforts, the Zen of Comprehensive Archive Networks remains valid. Ultimately I think the smaller and more focussed a module, the more sense it makes to name it neutrally and descriptively. For complex packages, a more googlable name is more useful, since their mindshare flows from different channels. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // http://plasmasturm.org/
Re: New Module
On May 3, 2009, at 6:54 AM, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote: * Jonathan Rockway j...@jrock.us [2009-05-03 08:00]: This is why Perl people should blog more. Agreed, that helps up to a point. But you can’t natter on about *every* module at the same level of noise. I vehemently agree. At the risk of derailing this thread, I'll digress to say the Iron Man blogging competition has actually made me read fewer posts -- my initial impression was that the quality of a post was lower if it mentioned Iron Man in the first sentence. If you blog because you are inspired to say something important to the community, then I want to read it. If you blog every time you release a module, or just because mst told you to, then you are just lowering the signal-to-noise ratio. High S/N means optimizing quality/quantity. Jonathan's simply-stated opinion pushes to increase the denominator, which may help increase the visibility of the community but hurts inside the community. Chris
Puzzling error from cpan testers
For my module Number::Format I am getting a strange result from cpan testers that I can't replicate. See this error report... http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.cpan.testers/2009/03/msg3560533.html # Failed test 'pi with precision=6' # at t/round.t line 18. # got: 3.141593 # expected: 3.141593 # Failed test 'precision=-2' # at t/round.t line 24. # got: 123500 # expected: 123500 # Looks like you failed 2 tests of 16. t/round.t Here are the test cases in question: cmp_ok(round(PI,6), '==', 3.141593, 'pi with precision=6'); cmp_ok(round(123456.78951, -2), '==', 123500, 'precision=-2' ); Since it's using '==' it shouldn't be possible to get those errors, right? Anyone have any thoughts?
Re: Puzzling error from cpan testers
On 3 May 2009, at 20:07, Bill Ward wrote: For my module Number::Format I am getting a strange result from cpan testers that I can't replicate. See this error report... http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.cpan.testers/2009/03/msg3560533.html # Failed test 'pi with precision=6' # at t/round.t line 18. # got: 3.141593 # expected: 3.141593 # Failed test 'precision=-2' # at t/round.t line 24. # got: 123500 # expected: 123500 # Looks like you failed 2 tests of 16. t/round.t Here are the test cases in question: cmp_ok(round(PI,6), '==', 3.141593, 'pi with precision=6'); cmp_ok(round(123456.78951, -2), '==', 123500, 'precision=-2' ); Since it's using '==' it shouldn't be possible to get those errors, right? Anyone have any thoughts? Yeah, that's floating point. There can be a difference between the two values that's too small to display but big enough to make them non- equal. '==' is /always/ risky with FP values. You should instead check for the value being within an acceptable range. -- Andy Armstrong, Hexten
Re: Puzzling error from cpan testers
On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Andy Armstrong a...@hexten.net wrote: On 3 May 2009, at 20:07, Bill Ward wrote: For my module Number::Format I am getting a strange result from cpan testers that I can't replicate. See this error report... http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.cpan.testers/2009/03/msg3560533.html [...]Since it's using '==' it shouldn't be possible to get those errors, right? Anyone have any thoughts? Yeah, that's floating point. There can be a difference between the two values that's too small to display but big enough to make them non-equal. '==' is /always/ risky with FP values. You should instead check for the value being within an acceptable range. Do you think I should change it to use eq in the test?
Re: Puzzling error from cpan testers
On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Bill Ward b...@wards.net wrote: For my module Number::Format I am getting a strange result from cpan testers that I can't replicate. See this error report... http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.cpan.testers/2009/03/msg3560533.html # Failed test 'pi with precision=6' # at t/round.t line 18. # got: 3.141593 # expected: 3.141593 That's my report. Perl is compiled with -Dusemorebits (64int-ld) and is thus using long doubles. That tends to trip up direct comparisions of floating point. For floating point comparison, I usually recommend Test::Number::Delta. However, given that your module is about formatting stuff, maybe the best approach is forcing string comparison. From a quick test -- using 'eq' instead of '==' in your modules passes tests on my system. -- David
Re: New Module
* Chris Dolan ch...@chrisdolan.net [2009-05-03 16:25]: If you blog because you are inspired to say something important to the community, then I want to read it. If you blog every time you release a module, or just because mst told you to, then you are just lowering the signal-to-noise ratio. High S/N means optimizing quality/quantity. Jonathan's simply-stated opinion pushes to increase the denominator, which may help increase the visibility of the community but hurts inside the community. I don’t know that it’s that simple. The Iron Man thing has caused a lot of personal weblogs to pop up and there’ve been plenty of genuinely interesting posts in them. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // http://plasmasturm.org/
