Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
Hi Elaine, thanks for your message. See below for my response. On Fri, 08 Feb 2013 22:03:40 -0500 Elaine Ashton eash...@mac.com wrote: On Feb 7, 2013, at 10:56 PM, Jacinta Richardson jar...@perltraining.com.au wrote: There's another key difference that should be recognised, and the situation isn't that there is a dire shortage of women who know Perl (25-30% of Perl programmers out in business), there's a dire shortage of women involved in the Perl community. (between 2 and 6%) The tenacious women are learning Perl, they're just doing so for work. Not for fun. I'd say that the percentage is higher as women are very well represented in system administration where perl remains a very common tool, but as plumbers we aren't thought of until something breaks. I'm one of those crabby sorts and I was pleasantly surprised by the perl folks at the first perl conference since I had spent years lurking as a male persona on irc and usenet. I'll admit the linguistic nerdery drew me in, but the whisky snobbery certainly sealed the deal. I think the appeal of the perl community is the wide variety of interests and the curiosity for more. The fun of the perl community isn't with perl but with everything else. I will also say that I gave up on many things not because it wasn't fun but because there are those who don't have basic social graces and who make the thought of going to the dentist vs doing something for the perl community a no-contest idea...at least the dentist offers painkillers and a smile. Since I'm on about telling the truth and trying to guilt the silent into believing that silence is not a helpful act, I'll be direct about the history that Shlomi asked me for ownership a few years ago and I refused because he's even more self-promoting than Randal and I didn't want a Perl History according to a megalomaniacal dude who filled the timeline with his own milestones (Don't waste your time Shlomi). I admit I may be self-promoting and ego-maniacal and self-centred and lots of other stuff. However, I also care about the Perl community (and the global open source community in general, since I'm trying not to be a tribalist), and also agree that my own interests and those of the community at large align more often than not. For example, http://perl-begin.org/ was primarily my endeavour, which I have promoted and boasted of, but many people also found it a useful resource, and it proved of utility. The secret to deal with problematic people is not to go on a feud with them, and decide you want nothing to do with them, but rather to acknowledge whatever faults they have, and try to deal with them, despite that and make the best of the situation. See: http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1747.html (= “the Stoic road to peace of mind”). I think many parents to children will testify that their children can be disobedient, or mischievious, or not do their homework or their chores on time, or whatever, but they still love them despite all that, and try to educate them in whatever way is possible. Perfection is in imperfection. I'm aware that it has gone unmantained, but it's my project and I'd like to hand it off to someone who isn't going to use it as a way to jerk themselves off and those sorts with spare time are hard to find. Even without updates, I'm glad I did the timeline since even though the critics bitch that it hasn't been maintained, they didn't write it and don't have the stories I do. :) even so. The episode left me feeling again that no good deed goes unpunished which best describes perl. My own other half has bitter memories of being pumpkin which is an unfortunate, yet meaningful, tidbit. When even your most devoted think they've not spent their time as well as they'd have hoped. Seems like you are trying to protect the family's Jewels. I have the opposite view, in which I'd rather people build upon my work and take it in all directions, because people are more willing to read or contribute to something that is under CC-by, CC-by-sa, etc. or other permissive or copyleft licences, than to contribute to something that is under a much stricter licence, while people who are nefarious (e.g: spammers) won't care even if it's All-Rights-Reserved and proprietary. You may wish to read about the noble and highly moral teaching and deeds of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin (though the English Wikipedia article has become too detailed) for how to turn your enemies into friends, treat competitors with respect and avoid silly feuds and «an-eye-for-an-eye» and «may my soul die with philistines» bitterness. It is applicable for the software and digital media worlds today, as much as it applied to warfare back then. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Apple Inc. is Evil - http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/ When Chuck Norris uses
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Feb 7, 2013, at 10:56 PM, Jacinta Richardson jar...@perltraining.com.au wrote: There's another key difference that should be recognised, and the situation isn't that there is a dire shortage of women who know Perl (25-30% of Perl programmers out in business), there's a dire shortage of women involved in the Perl community. (between 2 and 6%) The tenacious women are learning Perl, they're just doing so for work. Not for fun. I'd say that the percentage is higher as women are very well represented in system administration where perl remains a very common tool, but as plumbers we aren't thought of until something breaks. I'm one of those crabby sorts and I was pleasantly surprised by the perl folks at the first perl conference since I had spent years lurking as a male persona on irc and usenet. I'll admit the linguistic nerdery drew me in, but the whisky snobbery certainly sealed the deal. I think the appeal of the perl community is the wide variety of interests and the curiosity for more. The fun of the perl community isn't with perl but with everything else. I will also say that I gave up on many things not because it wasn't fun but because there are those who don't have basic social graces and who make the thought of going to the dentist vs doing something for the perl community a no-contest idea...at least the dentist offers painkillers and a smile. Since I'm on about telling the truth and trying to guilt the silent into believing that silence is not a helpful act, I'll be direct about the history that Shlomi asked me for ownership a few years ago and I refused because he's even more self-promoting than Randal and I didn't want a Perl History according to a megalomaniacal dude who filled the timeline with his own milestones (Don't waste your time Shlomi). I'm aware that it has gone unmantained, but it's my project and I'd like to hand it off to someone who isn't going to use it as a way to jerk themselves off and those sorts with spare time are hard to find. Even without updates, I'm glad I did the timeline since even though the critics bitch that it hasn't been maintained, they didn't write it and don't have the stories I do. :) even so. The episode left me feeling again that no good deed goes unpunished which best describes perl. My own other half has bitter memories of being pumpkin which is an unfortunate, yet meaningful, tidbit. When even your most devoted think they've not spent their time as well as they'd have hoped. e.
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On 07/02/13 13:49, Shlomi Fish wrote: Before I answer your question, let me add that I think we should train potential female (and male) contributors to not give up so easily after running into a potential difficulty. I have no idea how you train potential contributors to not give up but you don't do it by being an arse. Studies show that boys are encouraged to keep trying, and girls are often told oh, let me do it for you from very, very young ages. That seems like training potential female contributors to give up and after a lifetime of that kind of training I don't see it as very surprising that some women are likely to stumble and give up rather than be tenacious. Sad, but not surprising. However, having said that, we're not held to what we learned as children. There are many professions which require tenacity, such as athletics, law, business management...; and so women can and do learn such skills. It's just worth understanding that some women are coming into learning such skills at a disadvantage to those men who were lucky enough to be taught them for the majority of their lives. There's another key difference that should be recognised, and the situation isn't that there is a dire shortage of women who know Perl (25-30% of Perl programmers out in business), there's a dire shortage of women involved in the Perl community. (between 2 and 6%) The tenacious women are learning Perl, they're just doing so for work. *Not for fun. * I suspect that when there are people who are approaching the Perl community in an attempt to try to learn to program, or who already know how to program and want to learn Perl, we have to *compete with other **fun**pursuits.* When the few bad apples in the community are allowed to behave badly towards them, that's not fun. *If learning Perl isn't **fun**, they won't stay.* Why would they? There are other, more fun things to do than be insulted, treated badly, harassed or otherwise in pursuit of something you thought could be cool. This is a problem for Perl and, in my opinion, for programming in general - *programming is not competing as well against **other fun pursuits*. It's also worth noting that when people flame others on mailing lists, or abuse others in IRC channels, active contributors also go away. You can lose up to 25% of your project just from one long flame-war. *People are in open source for fun*. Take the fun away, make it worse than work, and lots of them won't stay. It's easy to find entertainment on line these days that doesn't involve dealing with people who are being arses. Telling people that they have to have a thick skin, in order to have fun, will not work into the future. Knowing Perl or being a developer in a lot of open source is no longer enough of a hallowed destination that it's sufficient reward for weathering the abuse between newbie and achievement. Perl (and a lot of open source) needs new developers more than it needs developers with thick skins. *Getting a thick skin isn't fun.* It doesn't matter what you had to go through. It's inevitable to face hardship and abuse, because even I, as a guy, faced them, and still do, and have to know how to overcome them. Yes, men face abuse too. The abuse men face is rarely gendered. Women may face worse abuse if their gender is known than you likely have any idea about. Regardless, strangely enough, *abuse is not fun* regardless of your gender. Some people will stick through it, but I can't blame the people who don't. I think trying to restructure a so-called-hostile community is like making the mountain come to Muhammad. On the other hand, a single motivated person with some amount of creative thinking, and who is not willing to give up can make a world of a difference. *Hostile communities are not fun* for people who don't want to show off how much of an arse they can be. If we want people to come to learn Perl and participate in the Perl community, because *Perl is fun* (and as a language I really believe it is) then we need to make sure that*participating in the Perl community is fun*. Or at least we need to make sure that participating doesn't suck. Yes, individual motivated people can change things, they do all the time. People who stand against hostile behaviour and work to welcome and encourage all potential contributors are changing things. People who encourage involvement and shared decision making are changing things. People who make sure that their actions are*increasing the level of fun* rather than sucking it out, are changing things. On Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:54:29 +1100 Jacinta Richardson jar...@perltraining.com.au wrote: Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay. It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up to
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Feb 5, 2013, at 10:55 PM, Shlomi Fish shlo...@shlomifish.org wrote: So I think it is better to encourage post-Feminist / post-Buffy / post-Friends / etc. female hackers’ heroines. Trying to tout my own horn, here is some ( hopefully ) entertaining and amusing post-Buffy / post-Feminist online literature I've written: So self-promoting some sort of cringeworthy fantasy fem-hero fiction is somehow illuminating? You missed the point... What we want to believe and what is real are often two different things, just as the toddlers clung to what they believed was the right answer versus the actual right answer. These are the lies we tell ourselves much like the term 'meritocracy' is so highly touted, so firmly held as a virtue of open source and, yet, if closely examined isn't really quite true if we're being completely honest with ourselves. When Larry gave the YAPC keynote in STL in 2002 which was on the theme of more women in perl using Tolkien's pantheon of heroic women I cringed, not because I don't enjoy the genre, but because if anyone needs fewer fictional ideas about women it would be those in the audience nodding their heads. In order for change to occur, you're going to have to challenge what you believe to be are unassailable truths. e.
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On 06/02/13 14:55, Shlomi Fish wrote: I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active contributor to advocacy@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is that Feminists (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s - a term which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start, I realise this is derailing the thread further, but I'm going to object to this. Shlomi, there are *many*, *many* men in the Perl community who manage to get along with the women in the Perl community without any gender-related problems at all. For starters, they don't insist on using guruess or hackeress after being told that guru and hacker were not originally gendered and don't need to be so (and I'm delighted to see that you've improved in this area). They're also the ones who wouldn't even bring up the word feminazi if trying to make your point, when it has never meant the same thing and is and always has been a deliberate slur against feminism. They're also the ones who don't jump to point the finger at feminists for what is clearly a society-wide problem. Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay. It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up to your tech group if she's there because her boyfriend is, or who her boyfriend is, or even if she has a boyfriend, is also not okay. If someone is correcting you on what you view to be relatively mild transgressions perhaps it means that mostly you're doing okay. Or, occasionally, perhaps it means you didn't understand that your transgression isn't that mild. As a feminist, I can say with pride that (although not perfect) the Perl community at large is my favourite group of tech people to hang out with largely because it's the least sexist. Sure, I got asked what the partners' program was like, less than an hour after my talk at YAPC::EU and sure, I get challenged to prove my Perl credibility by people who don't know who I am at YAPC::NA (a few times) but mostly this is a really good crowd. So I don't agree at all that part of the problem is that Feminists ... are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start, The Perl community has many men who behave wonderfully towards women who wish to start in Perl, and I (and I'm sure a lot of feminists) are delighted with that. What do I mean about behaving wonderfully? I mean treating them as you should treat any other starting developer: assume competence, determine background, point out appropriate resources and provide help when it is requested, and only that help, versus here let me finish it for you. I don't think that Perl's decline in popularity is all that related to why Perl has too few women in its communities. Over time, my training classes have probably averaged 25-30% women (which is on-par with women's representation in IT in business). Skud's survey (years ago) suggested 6% women (which is 3 times higher than women's representation in open source for pleasure, although the survey may have been answered by people who only worked in open source for work). I think Perl has too few women in its communities for almost all the same reasons that too few women are involved in open source for pleasure, and they're well documented elsewhere. That is, this isn't a Perl problem, but a wider problem. All we can do is promote (haha) the strengths of our community and treat our newcomers well. All the best, Jacinta
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
Hi Jacinta, we may be straying off-topic here. Before I answer your question, let me add that I think we should train potential female (and male) contributors to not give up so easily after running into a potential difficulty. In http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ , Jennifer is suffering a lot of verbal abuse from Erisa at first (who is a girl no less), but doesn't give up and eventually is able to become a competent FOSS developer. Larry Lessig also talked about why he keeps on blogging here despite being really offended from bad comments here: http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/How_to_start_contributing_to_or_using_Open_Source_Software#Some_Mental_Preparation It's inevitable to face hardship and abuse, because even I, as a guy, faced them, and still do, and have to know how to overcome them. On the other hand, a female Dutch open-source developer (in her 50s or so - mother to several 20-years old, etc.) told me that she would give up much more easily on some of my non-sexist related problems I ran into and never try to contribute to that community again. I think trying to restructure a so-called-hostile community is like making the mountain come to Muhammad. On the other hand, a single motivated person with some amount of creative thinking, and who is not willing to give up can make a world of a difference. Samantha Smith ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith ) changed the fate of the cold war (for the better), by simply writing a letter (and she was a 10-years old child). It's now even easier to do that using the Internet. now on to what you said: On Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:54:29 +1100 Jacinta Richardson jar...@perltraining.com.au wrote: On 06/02/13 14:55, Shlomi Fish wrote: I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active contributor to advocacy@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is that Feminists (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s - a term which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start, I realise this is derailing the thread further, but I'm going to object to this. Shlomi, there are *many*, *many* men in the Perl community who manage to get along with the women in the Perl community without any gender-related problems at all. For starters, they don't insist on using guruess or hackeress after being told that guru and hacker were not originally gendered and don't need to be so (and I'm delighted to see that you've improved in this area). Thanks! Anyway, some people may be tempted to use these terms because they are speakers of foreign languages which have gendered nouns, adjectives, etc. and it influences their thoughts, even in English. So you shouldn't jump the gun at them and accuse them of being sexist, because then you're adding oil to the fire. They're also the ones who wouldn't even bring up the word feminazi if trying to make your point, when it has never meant the same thing and is and always has been a deliberate slur against feminism. They're also the ones who don't jump to point the finger at feminists for what is clearly a society-wide problem. “Society-wide problems” can be changed by courageous individuals who instead of blaming their problems on the world at large, take simple yet clever actions (like those who play role-playing games know to take), and know better than to give up. Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay. It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up to your tech group if she's there because her boyfriend is, or who her boyfriend is, or even if she has a boyfriend, is also not okay. Why not? While you shouldn't ask a woman if she has a boyfriend right at the beginning of the conversation, it's not such a bad question to ask later on. But after reading the HOWTO encourage women in open source, I felt a lot of guilt from actually thinking about talking with the women who attended it, and now I realise it was baseless. If someone is correcting you on what you view to be relatively mild transgressions perhaps it means that mostly you're doing okay. Or, occasionally, perhaps it means you didn't understand that your transgression isn't that mild. As a feminist, I can say with pride that (although not perfect) the Perl community at large is my favourite group of tech people to hang out with largely because it's the least sexist. Sure, I got asked what the partners' program was like, less than an hour after my talk at YAPC::EU and sure, I get challenged to prove my Perl credibility by people who don't know who I am at YAPC::NA (a few times) but mostly this is a really good crowd. I'm glad. :-). I also think that the
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Feb 6, 2013, at 7:54 PM, Jacinta Richardson jar...@perltraining.com.au wrote: I don't think that Perl's decline in popularity is all that related to why Perl has too few women in its communities. Over time, my training classes have probably averaged 25-30% women (which is on-par with women's representation in IT in business). Skud's survey (years ago) suggested 6% women (which is 3 times higher than women's representation in open source for pleasure, although the survey may have been answered by people who only worked in open source for work). I think Perl has too few women in its communities for almost all the same reasons that too few women are involved in open source for pleasure, and they're well documented elsewhere. That is, this isn't a Perl problem, but a wider problem. All we can do is promote (haha) the strengths of our community and treat our newcomers well. I knew that anecdote would take this in the wrong direction, but I couldn't resist as it was a truly amusing moment and, at the same time, a revelation of human nature. You're right, it's not just a Perl problem, but we wouldn't be here 10+ years later talking about the same problems with the same people if the issue was solely a technical one. I think numbers, percentages, or the generally nice boys in the close community that we are familiar with (I did marry one...) may be misleading not only because there's plenty of words spent on the subject, probably more from men than women, but if we are leaving our own wishful thinking behind, a world where sexism is no longer an issue, a company like GoDaddy would be out of business overnight (for those outside of the US, see YouTube for GoDaddy commercials...QED). Words and documented lists of reasons why don't appear to be very effective. It's an issue, but that it's still an issue that gets the soft bokeh of a lovely leica 50mm lens in low light means there's a lot of other things that don't see the crisp light of midday. I spent a year in Switzerland which was like stepping into a German version of Mad Men set in the modern world without mid-century modern hipness, but with all the sexism still intact and overtly enforced. It was an interesting experience in how everything can look so similar as long as you don't challenge the status quo...and don't flush your toilet after 10pm or before 6am. :) So, to bring it back to what I was originally getting at...questions and words are only useful if the answers are more than just the lies we tell ourselves and others because it's what we and others want to hear. In the words of Dr. House, Everybody lies. e.
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Tue, Feb 05, 2013 at 02:30:03PM -0500, eash...@mac.com wrote: On Feb 5, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Nicholas Clark n...@ccl4.org wrote: Yes. Surprisingly familiar set of names, most I recognise from at least 10 years ago. Why aren't there new names? Likely the same reason(s) as 10 or more years ago. :) (The breeding programme will take time to deliver results. Something needs to change in the meantime) Well, there have been a lot of words wasted on Why aren't there more women in $x? for just as many years with just as little change and I do think the correlation is meaningful if not causation. The breeding programme does appear to be producing quite a few females so you'd think there'd be more earnest investigation instead of believing the world will be miraculously changed in a few years, but I'm not optimistic such will be the case. I was going to make some kind of actually relevant contribution, but as I am ill, it would probably come out all wrong. I'll try to remember to say something later if this doesn't kill me. dha -- David H. Adler - d...@panix.com - http://www.panix.com/~dha/ Perl gives you enough rope to hang yourself and your neighbor. - Randal L. Schwartz
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
Hi e, On Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:30:03 -0500 eash...@mac.com wrote: On Feb 5, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Nicholas Clark n...@ccl4.org wrote: Yes. Surprisingly familiar set of names, most I recognise from at least 10 years ago. Why aren't there new names? Likely the same reason(s) as 10 or more years ago. :) (The breeding programme will take time to deliver results. Something needs to change in the meantime) Well, there have been a lot of words wasted on Why aren't there more women in $x? for just as many years with just as little change and I do think the correlation is meaningful if not causation. The breeding programme does appear to be producing quite a few females so you'd think there'd be more earnest investigation instead of believing the world will be miraculously changed in a few years, but I'm not optimistic such will be the case. I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active contributor to advocacy@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is that Feminists (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s - a term which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start, which causes them to do nothings towards them (as a worst of all possible solutions - see http://motivator-and-inspirator.blogspot.co.il/2010/07/grandfather-grandson-and-donkeys.html ), and make the ground fertile for constant abuse by the sexist “naked pics, plz” people. So I think it is better to encourage post-Feminist / post-Buffy / post-Friends / etc. female hackers’ heroines. Trying to tout my own horn, here is some ( hopefully ) entertaining and amusing post-Buffy / post-Feminist online literature I've written: * http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ - the Human Hacking Field Guide - “An unlikely female computer hacker (= software enthusiast, not a computer intruder)-wannabe is getting taught by an even more unlikely female computer hacker. It takes place in Los Angeles, California and is written in English. ” * http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/ - a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode with some loose ends, which is featuring Katie Jacobson, a typical http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y female software hacker (originally from Berkeley, California, a Technion graduate and then working as a system administrator on a private merceneries star ship) who is excited (or sometimes agitated) to experience the various farfetched wonders my imaginary world crossing of Star Trek TNG/DS9, Buffy, Judaism, Objectivism and Neo-Objectivism, geek culture and many other lesser influences. Furthermore, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadzia_Dax and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kira_Nerys also play important rules there as does Deborah the Prophet. * https://github.com/shlomif/Selina-Mandrake ; http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Selina-Mandrake/ - “Selina Mandrake - The Slayer” - Selina is an unusual vampire slayer, who while being an Anglo-American student, with aspirations of becoming a Near East Archaelogist, testifies that: “I’m not into martial arts, and I’m really clumsy. As much as I like playing Basketball (and I do), I royally suck at it… ”. Despite all that, using the fact that she knows enough about the Near East, Judaism/Semitic culture, and popular culture, she is able of slaying all the demons she encounter, but while finding the entire process extremely emotional. - Regards, Shlomi Fish An anecdote I'm fond of sharing since it still makes me laugh is when I noticed a group of 4yo pre-schoolers playing with a European layer puzzle of the human body (EU for anatomical realism) I asked them, What is the largest organ in the human body? Without exception, the girls pointed to their head or their hearts and the boys, well, the boys all pointed to the most cherished of male body parts. I managed to not make ribald comments leading to nightmares or corruption of such innocent souls and soldiered on informing them that, no, the skin is the largest of the organs in the human body. Again I asked the question and the girls, without exception, all pointed to their skin and, the boys all pointed to their cherished member. Some things don't change. :) If you want change, you have to do more than ask why and have a panel of talking heads at a conference...or announce a new version of the language in hopes that change can be driven merely by external novelty. e. -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ The Case for File Swapping - http://shlom.in/file-swap The X in XSLT stands for eXtermination. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
Hi Johan,
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100
Johan Vromans jvrom...@squirrel.nl wrote:
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere
We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do
about it?
I now have something more to add. Recently I've done some small (but important)
tweaks to http://perl-begin.org/ to make the intent of it clearer, and to avoid
some what I perceived as pointless marketing-speak. People should now be able to
use it to learn Perl immediately and effectively, without all the advocacy
speak.
As I noted on #perl , I suspect that part of the reason most people still prefer
jQuery ( http://jquery.com/ - the “write less, do more” JS library) instead of
Angular JS ( http://angularjs.org/ - the “Superheroic JavaScript MVW
Framework”) is because jQuery’s motto tells you why you would want to use it,
while Angular JS uses hyperbolic adjectives (“Superheroic” - bleh).
As Mark Twain notes in
http://palc.sd40.bc.ca/palc/Archive/writingtips/twainadjectives.htm :
When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most
of them—then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close
together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a
wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get
rid of as any other vice
I really liked the old http://www.cpan.org/ motto of “stop reinventing wheels -
start building spaceships” because it uses a good analogy from something more
tangible than software, for the philosophy behind CPAN. Many people now feel
that Perl 5 and perl 5 are almost useless without the ability to use external
CPAN modules, and we at #perl on Freenode have been suffering a lot of heat
from people who want to use Perl without it. That put aside, I think that
making some CPAN distributions and packages have less dependencies, faster to
load (Moo instead of Moose, etc.), and less intimidating will be a good thing.
One of the criticisms I heard about the Ruby and Ruby gems culture is that
“everything is a framework” and that “a simple script to move files. 100 MB of
RAM”.
In any case, I suggest we promote Perl simply by hacking: improving existing
CPAN distributions and other applications, creating new ones that we lack (like
CMSes, etc.), and not worry too much about whether or not Perl is the
hippest/most-in-vogue/coolest/OMG-Ponies!!!/etc. language, because hip and
fashions come and go (HTML - Dynamic HTML - Web 2.0 - HTML 5 anyone?). A lot
of people have been criticising languages like C and C++ all the time with all
sorts of criticisms, but both are popular among open-source developers, and
still used in production a lot[C++] and often are the best choice. Perl has some
advantages over Ruby or Python or JavaScript or CoffeeScript or whatever, even
in the core language (to say nothing about CPAN), and I find that Ruby or
Python's implicit scoping cause too many problems and are unpredictable, which
is why I normally still prefer using Perl 5.
So stop worrying, because eventually anti-something hype or propaganda is
getting old, and people use common sense and logic to criticise it, and they
eventually don't buy it even if the media keeps parroting the same something.
Like we say in Hebrew, “the lie does not have legs”. Even if the television or
mainstream media is broadcasting non-stop propaganda, most of the people who
matter will rather buy into stuff they see on the Internet, even if it seems
completely irrelevant or even silly such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangnam_Style or whatever.
Maybe I'm too naïve and optimistic (and have a positive view of life, humans,
and the world), but I think that “truth” will eventually prevail, only that we
must constantly seek better and more up-to-date “truth”s, because “existence
exists” and is dynamic and there will never be a “Theory of Everything” or the
“Omega” of human enlightenment. We must constantly seek it. I just hope that
humanity or our planet does not perish in this course.
[ Sorry for the flow of consciousness towards the end. ]
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
{{{
[C++] - I personally feel that C++ gives me too much rope to hang myself, so in
order to save me from myself, I prefer sticking to C, but it seems to work fine
in projects such as Qt, KDE, or web browsers or whatever, where programmers are
more clueful than I am, at least in this respect.
}}}
--
-
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
Perl Humour - http://perl-begin.org/humour/
The Spanish Inquisition does not expect Chuck Norris.
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 23:21:24 -0600, Jeremy Fluhmann wrote: On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Peter Scott pe...@psdt.com wrote: Yesterday I was talking with a colleague about configuration management frameworks like Chef, Puppet, and Saltstack. Those are Python- and Ruby- based. He asked whether there was anything in that family based on Perl. After extensive searching, I was forced to conclude that there wasn't. Just to throw out there something I came across a while back: (R)?ex - http://rexify.org/ Written in Perl and appears to be very similar to Ansible. Thank you! That appears well worth a closer look. -- Peter Scott http://www.perlmedic.com/ http://www.perldebugged.com/ http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0137001274 http://www.oreillyschool.com/certificates/perl-programming.php
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On 31/01/13 09:10, Johan Vromans wrote: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do about it? -- Johan Did C ever make serious money? What was the evolution rate of C? Is C or not the basis of systems programming? My point is that a good language withstands time because its useful. Perl (5) is in use and will be in use. Not because is bad/good and/or Perl 6 will come into place, but due to a fact it has a domain. And Perl has a domain not because other languages cannot do what Perl does, but due to the fact they cannot do it the WAY Perl does. The way a language is constructed semantically has a one to one correspondence with the way your brain works. For some people, Perl's syntax hits a sweet spot and they stick to it. For others, it is confusing, alien and can - apparently - make you a bad programmer (I have seen bad programmers in every programming language I know, so that's not a characteristic of Perl). In the same way, people that parallel program, work with Intel's extensions/compilers, CUDA and/or Erlang. Try to convince an Erlang programmer that his language is obsolete. They will laugh at you and point out many examples. Conclusion: A language is walking down the road of obsolescence when its semantic structure becomes irrelevant to the way people think and its domain dies. Neither of that is true for Perl (5) and the whole shebang has very little to do with Perl 6. Frankly, I do not see any original point in this article, IMHO. Best regards, -- -- George Magklaras PhD RHCE no: 805008309135525 Head of IT/Senior Systems Engineer Biotechnology Center of Oslo and the Norwegian Center for Molecular Medicine/ Vitenskapelig Databehandling (VD) - Research Computing Services EMBnet TMPC Chair http://folk.uio.no/georgios http://hpc.uio.no Tel: +47 22840535
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Sun, 3 Feb 2013 10:04:42 +0200 Shlomi Fish shlo...@shlomifish.org wrote: [snip] - Web 2.0 - HTML 5 anyone?). A lot of people have been criticising languages like C and C++ all the time with all sorts of criticisms, but both are popular among open-source developers, and still used in production a lot[C++] and often are the best choice. Perl has some advantages over Ruby or Python or JavaScript or CoffeeScript or [snip] This reminds me of one of my favorite programming language quotes: There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. --- Bjarne Stroustrup G. Wade -- A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. -- Alan Perlis
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
Hi Georgios, On Sun, 03 Feb 2013 22:51:28 +0100 Georgios Magklaras georg...@biotek.uio.no wrote: On 31/01/13 09:10, Johan Vromans wrote: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do about it? -- Johan Did C ever make serious money? What was the evolution rate of C? Is C or not the basis of systems programming? My point is that a good language withstands time because its useful. Perl (5) is in use and will be in use. Not because is bad/good and/or Perl 6 will come into place, but due to a fact it has a domain. And Perl has a domain not because other languages cannot do what Perl does, but due to the fact they cannot do it the WAY Perl does. The way a language is constructed semantically has a one to one correspondence with the way your brain works. For some people, Perl's syntax hits a sweet spot and they stick to it. For others, it is confusing, alien and can - apparently - make you a bad programmer (I have seen bad programmers in every programming language I know, so that's not a characteristic of Perl). In the same way, people that parallel program, work with Intel's extensions/compilers, CUDA and/or Erlang. Try to convince an Erlang programmer that his language is obsolete. They will laugh at you and point out many examples. Conclusion: A language is walking down the road of obsolescence when its semantic structure becomes irrelevant to the way people think and its domain dies. Neither of that is true for Perl (5) and the whole shebang has very little to do with Perl 6. Frankly, I do not see any original point in this article, IMHO. Have not read the original article, but I agree. BTW, on ##programming on Freenode, people have been bitching about every language under the sun. My signature quote this time is relevant, and is taken from http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/COBOL-the-New-Age-Programming-Language/ , as a reference to Python’s home page where they used to boast that “NASA uses COBOL” which while technically true, is not fully honest, because given NASA’s history, budget, and diversity, it uses a very large number of old and new programming languages and other technologies. Also see: * http://xkcd.com/519/ ( Moreover, NASA’s software development unit is just the tip of the iceberg. ) But I guess I should not give a Midrash ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrash ; “study” - not “mid-rash” ) to a joke. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Rethinking CPAN - http://shlom.in/rethinking-cpan NASA Uses COBOL. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100, Johan Vromans wrote: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days- are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do about it? This is, basically, Jon Orwant's prophecy coming home to roost: People are going to move on and do something else. If Perl 6 was ready for prime time, it would be a different story. Yesterday I was talking with a colleague about configuration management frameworks like Chef, Puppet, and Saltstack. Those are Python- and Ruby- based. He asked whether there was anything in that family based on Perl. After extensive searching, I was forced to conclude that there wasn't. If there had been, we would have tried to make it work. That sucked. Not trying to blame anyone, and not trying to claim I have an answer. Just generally disappointed. -- Peter Scott http://www.perlmedic.com/ http://www.perldebugged.com/ http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0137001274 http://www.oreillyschool.com/certificates/perl-programming.php
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Peter Scott pe...@psdt.com wrote: On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100, Johan Vromans wrote: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days- are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do about it? This is, basically, Jon Orwant's prophecy coming home to roost: People are going to move on and do something else. If Perl 6 was ready for prime time, it would be a different story. Yesterday I was talking with a colleague about configuration management frameworks like Chef, Puppet, and Saltstack. Those are Python- and Ruby- based. He asked whether there was anything in that family based on Perl. After extensive searching, I was forced to conclude that there wasn't. If there had been, we would have tried to make it work. That sucked. Not trying to blame anyone, and not trying to claim I have an answer. Just generally disappointed. Just to throw out there something I came across a while back: (R)?ex - http://rexify.org/ Written in Perl and appears to be very similar to Ansible. Jeremy -- Jeremy Fluhmann *http://twitter.com/jfluhmann** http://jfluhmann.edublogs.org **http://linkedin.com/in/jfluhmann** Texas Linux Fest - http://www.texaslinuxfest.org Texas Open Source Project - http://texos.org YAPC::NA 2013 - **http://www.yapcna.org/yn2013/*http://www.yapcna.org/yn2013/
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 09:51:54PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote: It's sad, but it's true: Developers/Engineers like to think their creation is so cool, OBVIOUSLY everyone's going to buy one. This is/was Apple's approach. Sales people don't care about their product quality or usefulness, so long as everyone buys one. This is/was Microsoft's approach. 'Nuff said. I disagree on that last paragraph. Because, Microsoft is a commercial organisation. The problem it is trying to optimise is how to make more money, which means selling more stuff (or the same stuff for more money) Whereas Perl is an open source creation. People are doing it to solve other problems. And, who is doing the marketing for Linux? After all, it's doing rather well on servers, and portable devices. [And, 10 years ago, who would have thought that the mobile phone platform wars would have been between a BSD variant, and Linux derivative? :-)] On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 03:23:14PM -0500, eash...@mac.com wrote: Perl was originally built to beat out scripting alternatives so this is fairly logical. Actually, no, it wasn't. It was built by one guy to solve a problem that one or more combinations of existing tools did not. I think pulling the 'marketing' vector won't succeed any more now than it has in the past, mostly because it eventually lacks the enthusiasm that only a few really can attain. And popularity is rarely an indicator of quality. Perhaps the question might be better asked, what does C, and even moreso Java, have that perl apparently lacks. I'd like to stress that Science is repeatable, whereas stuff you make up is not. ie http://blog.timbunce.org/2008/04/12/tiobe-or-not-tiobe-lies-damned-lies-and-statistics/ but the most recent dump that emerged from the dark areas of Tiobe suggested that C is more whatever-it-is-that-they-claim-it-is than Java So, somehow, C's marketing is better than Java (and all the rest) Which is strange, as C is far less trendy than Java, decades older, missing a bunch of enterprise buzzwords, easier to screw up, not what universities are churning out, etc And who is marketing C? Who is making money from selling it? Which, I think, is Elaine's point. C is doing something right. Without actually trying. Or at least, without trying to fake it. Nicholas Clark PS The article is poor. It fails to claim that Python is going nowhere because the current RHEL ships 2.6.6. Which would be only fair, given what they comment about Perl. PPS Note, 2.6.6, not 2.6.8. Either RHEL's numbers lie, or RHEL has failed to keep up with 2 CVEs: http://www.python.org/getit/releases/2.6.8/
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:25:32PM +, Nicholas Clark wrote: On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 09:51:54PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote: It's sad, but it's true: Developers/Engineers like to think their creation is so cool, OBVIOUSLY everyone's going to buy one. This is/was Apple's approach. Sales people don't care about their product quality or usefulness, so long as everyone buys one. This is/was Microsoft's approach. 'Nuff said. I disagree on that last paragraph. Because, Microsoft is a commercial organisation. The problem it is trying to optimise is how to make more money, which means selling more stuff (or the same stuff for more money) I'm not sure what the major difference is there with the point I was making, but never mind. Whereas Perl is an open source creation. People are doing it to solve other problems. Yes indeed. And, who is doing the marketing for Linux? After all, it's doing rather well on servers, and portable devices. It's doing extremely well, thank goodness. And the marketing is ground-swell, which proves individuals can make a difference, if there's enough of them ;-) -- Ciao Richard Foley http://www.rfi.net/books.html
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 05:54:53PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote: On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:25:32PM +, Nicholas Clark wrote: I'm not sure what the major difference is there with the point I was making, but never mind. No, me neither. That's the second basic reading comprehension failure for today. (Fortunately the first one was a private message to my sister, so it's not archived for posterity) Maybe I should give up and go to the pub. (Even if the one I'm thinking of thinks that flash is the right thing to make a website from) It's doing extremely well, thank goodness. And the marketing is ground-swell, which proves individuals can make a difference, if there's enough of them ;-) More warn bodies! Nicholas Clark
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
eash...@mac.com writes: I don't think perl needs marketing, it needs developers who anticipate and meet needs of those who might use the language to solve a problem. Most folks outside of the various communities really don't care what tool they use, just that it does the job. An impressive list of Perl success stories would surely do no harm. -- Johan
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On Feb 1, 2013, at 3:43 AM, Johan Vromans jvrom...@squirrel.nl wrote: An impressive list of Perl success stories would surely do no harm. Well, ORA has a few at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/perl/news/success_stories.html Perl is a niche language which is a way of saying it has a well defined range of purpose and is one of the reasons it's still on the map. If there is one thing that could be done, it's cleaning up CPAN which is simultaneously the best thing that ever happened to Perl and the worst thing that ever happened to Perl. Even the most dedicated Perl fanatic cannot help but be frustrated when installing 1 module becomes a 100 module install marathon. I don't anticipate that will be embraced any more now than in the past when I have attempted to get some enthusiasm behind such a project but, I can always hope for the future. :) e.
Why Idea systems should be remixed [was Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere]
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100 Johan Vromans jvrom...@squirrel.nl wrote: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do about it? To quote Larry Wall from http://www.perl.com/pub/1997/wall/keynote.html : I have a book on my bookshelf that I've never read, but that has a great title. It says, All Truth is God's Truth. And I believe that. The most viable belief systems are those that can reach out and incorporate new ideas, new memes, new metaphors, new interfaces, new extensions, new ways of doing things. My goal this year is to try to get Perl to reach out and cooperate with Java. I know it may be difficult for some of you to swallow, but Java is not the enemy. Nor is Lisp, or Python, or Tcl. That is not to say that these languages don't have good and bad points. I am not a cultural relativist. Nor am I a linguistic relativist. In case you hadn't noticed. :-) Throughout history, various religions, cultures, human languages, works of art, and other idea systems, were mixed-and-matched cross-pollinated one another, were forked and splinterred, and brought new memes into everywhere. An idea system that did not incorporate ideas from elsewhere quickly became stagnated and inbred, and were then largely forgotten. Furthermore, some idea systems “died”. Few people nowadays are pure Stoicists (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism ) and even the most devote Jews don't take the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentateuch_%28disambiguation%29 to its letter, and no one nowadays wants to program in Fortran I, COBOL or ALGOL (and yes, programming languages are, aside from their utility, idea systems). But the idea systems behind these languages live on. The Perl idea system has proven incredibly influential on most programming languages that came after it, so it has won. Maybe most people no longer find it adequate to use Perl 5, or think that some more in vogue languages are better, but the Perl influence lives on. I'm not a Perl tribalist, in the sense that if my customer prefers something else, then I use it, and try to make the best of the situation, even though I'm not 100% happy, which like I note in http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1747.html is something that Cognitive Therapy now recommends to do based on Stoicism. And I've started to write some projects in Ruby. People have been crying that Perl is dead, but it is very much alive, just as most people in the United States and in Great Britain have not heard of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great or of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin , but their incredible legacy still lives on, and many people carry the “memes” that they originate or establish in their mind and hearts. So what should we do: 1. Continue to improve perl, Perl and CPAN. We cannot have perl 5 stagnate, and the Perl 6 implementations are still incomplete and tend to be under-performing. 2. Don't worry about people using Perl instead of something else that still carries its legacy, or different legacies. 3. Continue to import new ideas from other places. 4. Continue our tendency to say that “There's more than one way to do it” implies that some of these ways are using other programming languages, and that some languages got some things right more than Perl 5 or even Perl 6, or just differently - http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/57811.html . 5. Tell people that newer is not necessarily better. 6. Don't worry about battling Perl against statistical accusations of stagnations like TIOBE , GitHub statistics, Google trends, etc. , because these things are silly “My schwartz is bigger than yours” which the uninformed masses may fall for, but intelligent and wise people, who are the true movers and doers, don’t. 7. Finally, the language called “Perl 5” that we will use 20 years from now will be very different than the perl-5.000, but it will be more modern, more adapted to the times and hopefully better. And I'm almost sure that Perl’s legacy will live on and Perl will be remembered, even if no one uses something called “Perl”. --- I hope I made myself clear. Furthermore, a lot of recent trends can be dismissed as silly, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat -s, but lolcats have such a low barrier for entry (almost everyone can take a photo of a cat, or whatever and caption it using Inkscape or whatever), and a lot of lolcats are funny or amusing (yet often insightful). It is a whole new idea system and a very subversive at that, so much that both China and Iran blocked the Cheezburger network in their firewall, because they are afraid of it weakening their political power-structures and dogma (and as silly as it may seem, they are right about that). The important thing to note is that one should “embrace change”. See:
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
After skimming the article at the heart of the Slashdot discussion I think there are some reasons for the popularity of Perl-alternatives: a) Large corporations have supported some languages or standardized on them (Sun/Java, Apple/Objective-C). b) Some languages are hot because of a perceived low learning curve, widespread framework availability and adoption (JavaScript, frameworks like Mootools, JQuery, et. al.) c) In cases where you would think Perl would be a natural choice Bash seems easier in some cases, people are opting for the simplicity and portability of Bash rather than Perl in these cases... Prospective Strategies: A: Powerhouse Corporate Endorsement Our beloved computing industry has companies like Apple and Google at the forefront and they are both decidedly un-Perl-friendly. But who would have ever thought that these companies would be where they are today ten years ago? Certainly not me, that's for sure. My guess here is that, like everything in computing, sooner or later the computing market is going to shift again. Perhaps rather than computers or cell phones we will all start buying robots or something. Let's look into the future of computing, whatever is coming *after* this round, to become the defacto language. B: Slash Thine Learning Curve I'm all for building a smaller, more compact, version of Perl that is as absurdly restrictive as other languages. We can call it LockBox Perl or Nope-You-Can't-Do-That-Anymore Perl. Whatever. (There used to be something like this -- EmbPerl or something but I think it died because the Perl community didn't like it.) Allow for some special instruction at the top of scripts that allows you do actually use Perl instead of the locked-down version. That way corporations can simply say -- 'for project X you CANNOT use the cool unlock instruction.' Once Perl is in use it becomes easier to sell them onto more advanced features/syntax. C: Wait a Minute There... Here is where I think a marketing campaign would work. I think there is growth in the Linux user base and folks who want to experiment with the 'coolness' of Linux will inevitably experiment with scripting. The certification examinations for Linux all center on Bash, so it is no wonder that it is rising in popularity. If someone took the time to analyze this they might find the Bash adoption curve mimicking that of Linux adoption or perhaps Linux certification attempts. If this is correct then a good strategy might be to steer people toward trying Perl while they are banging away at the console. Perl was originally built to beat out scripting alternatives so this is fairly logical. On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 2:10 AM, Johan Vromans jvrom...@squirrel.nl wrote: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do about it? -- Johan --
