> Lately I've been wondering more and more why I keep writing and
> releasing modules, as no one ever seems to use them or even notice
> - there's zero feedback.
Welcome to the club. :-(
Although I have a significant number of popular and useful modules, I
very rarely get feedback either (present mailing-list participants
excepted, that is).
For example, the [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list has ben running
for the better part of a year now and has had only 14 original posts
(and maybe twice that many follow-ups). That's pretty pitiful
for a module that's used as widely as I believe Parse::RecDescent is.
I guess it's very tough to know whether the silence is indifference
or ingratitude. Perhaps you should try injecting a few bugs into your
modules -- I find that almost all the positive feedback I ever get is
along the lines:
Dear Damian
Thank for your excellent X module, which has saved me weeks of
effort here at GreedyCorp.
However, I ran across a problem when...
Maybe if you released buggier modules, you'd get more feedback. ;-)
> Another thing that annoys me is that even when you send bug reports
> or feedback to other people, there's zero reaction - like they
> don't care either. Any kind of acknowledgement would be nice - like
> 'thanks' or 'not now' or 'f**k off'.
I suppose I often seem guilty of this. Though in fact I still answer
every single email message I receive. The problem is, it sometimes takes
me weeks to get through the daily deluge to any particular piece of email.
Yet I really don't want to move to an "answering machine" response, like
Larry, Tom, and Randal were forced to. But I shall have to try to be
more prompt in responding to bug reports in the future.
Finally, I heartily agree with the others who have responded to this
thread: your modules are always elegantly conceived and beautifully
implemented. I, for one, appreciate both your ideas and your skill in
realizing them.
You should take comfort in having the respect of many of the very clever
people on this list. After all, it's not important how *many* people
appreciate your work, so much as what *calibre* of people do.
Damian
