Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
+1 On Sep 18, 2013, at 10:57, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: On 18/09/2013 14:21, Jérôme Étévé wrote: Probably a book about trolling on London.pm would be most entertaining. I think it reflects badly on our community when any concern raised about something lacking is automatically dismissed as trolling. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 20 Sep 2013, at 16:38, Adrian Howard adri...@quietstars.com wrote: On 20 September 2013 14:50, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 09:34:01AM +1000, Kieren Diment wrote: On 20/09/2013, at 9:21, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: If you are so passionate about seeing new niche Perl books written as you are making out, you had better fire up your editor and get cracking. Many publishers prefer msword ;) You can export Word format files from Scrivener :) It's the change tracking that's the problem - you still see a chunk of publishers relying on Word for that. Exporting isn't the issue. Importing the feedback from publishers is. Adrian You still see the vast majority of publishers working that way. The interesting disconnect is that the techies can’t see why the authors and editors like Word and the authors and editors fail to see why… Anyone who’s actually interested in this might want to look at the proceedings of http://www.w3.org/2012/12/global-publisher/agenda.html which should be available any time now. nic -- Corbas Consulting / @CorbasLtd Digital Publishing Consultancy and Training http://www.corbas.co.uk, +44 (0)7718 906817/+44 (0)1273 930765
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 20/09/2013 00:21, Peter Corlett wrote: You clearly disagree. I'm also cool with that. I doubt that, judging by the tone of your replies. However, your petulant whinges on this mailing list aren't going to achieve anything, except perhaps to add your name to a few killfiles. If you are so passionate about seeing new niche Perl books written as you are making out, you had better fire up your editor and get cracking. Or to use an infamous Perl acronym, STFUAWSC. Except C stands for copy. Oh well, I should have known better than to engage in discussion with someone whose email address begins with abuse. Have a nice life. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 20 September 2013 00:34, Kieren Diment dim...@gmail.com wrote: Many publishers prefer msword ;) Yeah, that's really frustrating. We used markdown, but only for the initial drafts, after which we compiled sources to .docx, after which Track Changes has been pretty much the state of the art. And don't get me started about marking up the PDFs at proofing stage... Have you looked into any of the github-for-writers tools? Some good links from http://madebyloren.com/github-for-writers osf'
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 04:57:08PM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote: On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 4:21 PM, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: If somebody new discovers Perl and uses it, that's great. If they don't, I'm cool with that too. Well if perl doesn't attract new developers, and the existing user base is a diminishing set, perl will eventually run out of developers. I'm old enough not to care about that. The world runs out of me, before perl runs out of developers. ;-) But if noone is using Perl anymore, then it doesn't really matter that there's noone left to maintain perl. But maybe you don't care about that too, and you'll be alone in your shed with your aging perl binary Commodore 64... ;) Abigail
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 20 September 2013 00:57, Paul Makepeace pa...@paulm.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 4:21 PM, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: If somebody new discovers Perl and uses it, that's great. If they don't, I'm cool with that too. Well if perl doesn't attract new developers, and the existing user base is a diminishing set, perl will eventually run out of developers. Yeah. Programming languages live and die just like everything else. There's nothing *wrong* as such with Perl doing the latter if it comes to it. But assuming we like Perl, noting that there's a problem and looking for ways to do something about it isn't a terrible idea either. osf'
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 20 Sep 2013, at 07:46, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: I doubt that, judging by the tone of your replies. Welcome to London.pm, home of robust discussion. Oh well, I should have known better than to engage in discussion with someone whose email address begins with abuse. Have a nice life. Back in the day, using abuse@ emails cut down on spam massively. If you genuinely believe you're trying to have an intelligent debate here, I'm amazed at the level of self delusion, because if you take trolling out of it it just comes off as a huge whine about the state of reality. James
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 09:34:01AM +1000, Kieren Diment wrote: On 20/09/2013, at 9:21, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: If you are so passionate about seeing new niche Perl books written as you are making out, you had better fire up your editor and get cracking. Many publishers prefer msword ;) You can export Word format files from Scrivener :)
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 20/09/2013, at 11:50 PM, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 09:34:01AM +1000, Kieren Diment wrote: On 20/09/2013, at 9:21, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: If you are so passionate about seeing new niche Perl books written as you are making out, you had better fire up your editor and get cracking. Many publishers prefer msword ;) You can export Word format files from Scrivener :) I've moved most of my writing activities to git+markdown plus some extra extensions of my own for handling citations unobtrusively (to make integration with Zotero easier while maintaining readability for normal humans).
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 20 September 2013 14:50, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 09:34:01AM +1000, Kieren Diment wrote: On 20/09/2013, at 9:21, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: If you are so passionate about seeing new niche Perl books written as you are making out, you had better fire up your editor and get cracking. Many publishers prefer msword ;) You can export Word format files from Scrivener :) It's the change tracking that's the problem - you still see a chunk of publishers relying on Word for that. Exporting isn't the issue. Importing the feedback from publishers is. Adrian
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 19 September 2013 11:51, Abigail abig...@abigail.be wrote: I'd call them niche books. If generic books don't sell, why would niche books? Actually - I wouldn't be surprised if a niche Perl book did sell better than a generic Perl book. Perl isn't the most popular kid on the block ATM. So there are few folk looking for general books. I wouldn't be surprised if the market of existing Perl devs who are looking for a decent introduction to Catalyst/Moose/whatever could be larger than the new Perl developers looking for general books. (better in this context of course does not translate to well ;-) Cheers, Adrian -- adri...@quietstars.com / +44 (0)7752 419080 / @adrianh / quietstars.com Subscribe to the latest Agile Lean UX news here http://is.gd/KREt5S
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 19 September 2013 20:16, Avleen Vig avl...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Well hold on just a minute there. One of the primary reasons Perl got to be hugely popular is exactly because books like Programming Perl and Learning Perl spoonfed the answers to new users. [snip] I don't remember it that way. I remember Perl getting traction and becoming popular and *then* Programming Perl and Learning Perl coming. Along with a bunch of other books. Many of them terrible. Publishers are in the business of making money. They *vastly* prefer to sell to an existing market, rather than try to create one. Technical books are a trailing indicator of interest, not a leading one. I can't really think of any counter examples. We already *have* good general books for introducing the relative newbie to Perl. Programming Perl, Learning Perl, Modern Perl Beginning Perl all spring to mind. I don't think adding more is going to produce more Perl devs. Cheers, Adrian -- adri...@quietstars.com / +44 (0)7752 419080 / @adrianh / quietstars.com Subscribe to the latest Agile Lean UX news here http://is.gd/KREt5S
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 4:19 PM, Adrian Howard adri...@quietstars.com wrote: Publishers are in the business of making money. They *vastly* prefer to sell to an existing market, rather than try to create one. Technical books are a trailing indicator of interest, not a leading one. I can't really think of any counter examples. We already *have* good general books for introducing the relative newbie to Perl. Programming Perl, Learning Perl, Modern Perl Beginning Perl all spring to mind. I don't think adding more is going to produce more Perl devs. The fact that they behave responsively doesn't mean they aren't part of the causative loop. Knowing you want to program something and finding a preponderence of ruby books in the shop means you're more likely to pick one up and learn ruby. James
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
At 05:21 PM 9/18/2013, gvim wrote: On 18/09/2013 16:10, Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote: Don't forget Ovid's Beginning Perl, http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781118013847.do :-) More generic Perl books. Exactly what we don't need. gvim I disagree. It is exactly what we need. Not you personally, probably, but certainly we as a Perl-community on a whole. A generic Perl book that covers programming Perl in a modern way for people who can't yet program at all, and for people who don't know Perl but who want to. I have sold 52 of them in just a couple of months and got some replies from my customers that they love the book and they thank me very much. And no, selling books is not my business, it's just something I do on the side. So 52 is quite a nice number. And I agree with you that we very much need updates on the Perl Cookbook and Object Oriented Perl (and Data Munging and so many more books need an update). And seeing that Perl 6 is getting stable and mature tells me that a good book Learning Perl 6 and Programming Perl 6 would be good sellers as well. Kind regards, Wendy van Dijk ...(I hope some publishers (especially O'Reilly and Manning) read this.)...
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 05:26:17AM +1200, Kent Fredric wrote: On 19 September 2013 03:04, Nicholas Clark n...@ccl4.org wrote: Maybe everyone already feels that they know Perl well enough to blag an interview. Maybe an interesting, and uniquely disruptive topic for a book could be You don't know Perl ( or something along those lines ), a book with a similar intent to Modern Perl, ... but targeted explicitly at people who think they know Perl, but aren't really part of the perl community, people who learnt Perl from reading horrible scripts that have been copy pasted around the internet. That book needs a chapter about the secret operators. ;-) -- Philippe Bruhat (BooK) Trust only in incompetence. You will never be disappointed. (Moral from Groo The Wanderer #16 (Epic))
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 19 September 2013 08:41, Philippe Bruhat (BooK) philippe.bru...@free.fr wrote: On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 05:26:17AM +1200, Kent Fredric wrote: Maybe an interesting, and uniquely disruptive topic for a book could be You don't know Perl ( or something along those lines... That book needs a chapter about the secret operators. ;-) That was my initial reaction, but: ... a book with a similar intent to Modern Perl I think it actually doesn't. osf'
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 19 September 2013 19:41, Philippe Bruhat (BooK) philippe.bru...@free.frwrote: That book needs a chapter about the secret operators. ;-) I disagree, I don't see much value in promoting esoteric ways to use Perl. We just need to promote things that are good, and things that are awesome, and things that make programming in Perl *better*, things that serve as compelling arguments to use a more modern Perl, things that serve to inspire people to use more *CPAN* -- Kent
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 9:46 AM, Kent Fredric kentfred...@gmail.com wrote: On 19 September 2013 19:41, Philippe Bruhat (BooK) philippe.bru...@free.frwrote: That book needs a chapter about the secret operators. ;-) I disagree, I don't see much value in promoting esoteric ways to use Perl. We just need to promote things that are good, and things that are awesome, and things that make programming in Perl *better*, things that serve as compelling arguments to use a more modern Perl, things that serve to inspire people to use more *CPAN* I'm actually inclined to write such a book. Anyone interested in coauthoring please message offlist and we can see if there's any mileage in it. James
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 08:46:35PM +1200, Kent Fredric wrote:
On 19 September 2013 19:41, Philippe Bruhat (BooK)
philippe.bru...@free.frwrote:
That book needs a chapter about the secret operators. ;-)
I disagree, I don't see much value in promoting esoteric ways to use Perl.
We just need to promote things that are good, and things that are awesome,
and things that make programming in Perl *better*, things that serve as
compelling arguments to use a more modern Perl, things that serve to
inspire people to use more *CPAN*
I was merely reacting to the proposed You don't know Perl title,
and thought the smiley expressed how deeply serious I was on the topic.
On the other hand ,Advanced Perl Programming, 2nd Edition had a chapter
devoted to Fun with Perl, mentioning golf, obfuscated Perl and the
Acme:: namespace. These things are also part of the Perl community, so
maybe a book targeted explicitly at people who think they know Perl,
but aren't really part of the perl community should mention them.
Some of the secret ops are actually awesome, used in production code,
and deserve to be better known. From the top of my head: 0+ !! @{[]} ()x!!
--
Philippe Bruhat (BooK)
Friendship is just brotherhood with a choice of brothers.
(Moral from Groo #9 (Image))
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 04:19:18PM +0100, gvim wrote: On 18/09/2013 15:57, Jason Clifford wrote: I wonder whether part of the answer to this question lies in the fact that the things that could be covered in Perl books about frameworks, Moose, etc are fairly well documented and that the documentation is easily available. Ruby and Rails are well documented: http://ruby-doc.org/ http://rubyonrails.org/documentation ... but the books sell very well. All of this is not to say there are no new books. There is a new edition of Mastering Perl on the way. Considering the last edition was published in 2007 I would rather have seen a new Perl Cookbook, Object-Oriented Perl or, better still, some new titles on specific applications of Perl, eg. Perl for Android (ok, ok but you get my drift), Perl REST APIs or Web Development with Dancer/Mojolicious. I'd call them niche books. If generic books don't sell, why would niche books? What type of books about other languages sell well? Is it the more generic books, or limited subject books you're proposing? If I look at my two shelves of Perl books, there's only one Perl book I've actually used when programming, and that's the Perl/Tk book (but the last time was probably 10 years ago). And then mostly because I didn't go along with the Perl/Tk manual pages. The other books I've used to do Perl programming don't contain a shred of Perl, and the authors may be completely unaware of existance of a language called Perl. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment has, for me, always been the best book to help my Perl programming. Abigail
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
Abigail abig...@abigail.be wrote: I'd call them niche books. If generic books don't sell, why would niche books? A thought. One way of mitigating the risk of writing a book that might not sell could be to use cloud funding (e.g. kickstarter.com). This would have a number of advantages: - it would make it much clearer if a subject/author combination were worth the effort - people could contribute to the writing of a book they think deserves to be written even if they don't want it (possibly at a contribution level less than that of people actually getting the book) - people could contribute more than the cost of the book in return for additional perks - it would be more apparent how little money is sometimes available for the effort of writing a book Chris
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 19 Sep 2013, at 12:21, Chris Jack chris_j...@msn.com wrote: [...] - it would be more apparent how little money is sometimes available for the effort of writing a book I don't know the exact figures, but it's roughly a four figure sum for a reasonably successful Perl book. And given that one is having to resort to Kickstarter because no publisher will touch it does not bode well. To write such a book involves many months of work. In comparison, somebody skilled enough to write said book could also go contracting and make the same amount of money in a few weeks. It's a fair comparison, since writing books is also effectively contracting. I would very much like such a Kickstarter to be a success, but realistically it is likely to tank.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
think about $20-30 and at least one day out of your life per week for 6 months to work on the book. It's not lucrative, but I found the whole experience fun and rewarding. Except for the day when I wrote around 4000 words and felt quite mentally unstable at the end. The following day I threw at least 3/4s of that work out. On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 11:01 PM, Kieren Diment dim...@gmail.com wrote: think about $6k for having at least one day of your life per week full time for six months. On 19/09/2013, at 10:01 PM, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: On 19 Sep 2013, at 12:21, Chris Jack chris_j...@msn.com wrote: [...] - it would be more apparent how little money is sometimes available for the effort of writing a book I don't know the exact figures, but it's roughly a four figure sum for a reasonably successful Perl book. And given that one is having to resort to Kickstarter because no publisher will touch it does not bode well. To write such a book involves many months of work. In comparison, somebody skilled enough to write said book could also go contracting and make the same amount of money in a few weeks. It's a fair comparison, since writing books is also effectively contracting. I would very much like such a Kickstarter to be a success, but realistically it is likely to tank.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
$20-30 per hour that should say. Why don't mailing lists have an edit button? On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 11:05 PM, Kieren Diment dim...@gmail.com wrote: think about $20-30 and at least one day out of your life per week for 6 months to work on the book. It's not lucrative, but I found the whole experience fun and rewarding. Except for the day when I wrote around 4000 words and felt quite mentally unstable at the end. The following day I threw at least 3/4s of that work out. On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 11:01 PM, Kieren Diment dim...@gmail.com wrote: think about $6k for having at least one day of your life per week full time for six months. On 19/09/2013, at 10:01 PM, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: On 19 Sep 2013, at 12:21, Chris Jack chris_j...@msn.com wrote: [...] - it would be more apparent how little money is sometimes available for the effort of writing a book I don't know the exact figures, but it's roughly a four figure sum for a reasonably successful Perl book. And given that one is having to resort to Kickstarter because no publisher will touch it does not bode well. To write such a book involves many months of work. In comparison, somebody skilled enough to write said book could also go contracting and make the same amount of money in a few weeks. It's a fair comparison, since writing books is also effectively contracting. I would very much like such a Kickstarter to be a success, but realistically it is likely to tank.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
Trolling aside, I've come to an understanding about this recently which can best be described thus: Peel has entered the Erlang stage of its life cycle. It is a very capable language, which became popular at a time when there was a great need for the things it provided. Since then it has seen less and less use in the areas of industry which have had the most rapid growth (mostly web development and operations). Ruby and php pretty much dominate that sphere. Python has a decent foothold in parts of academia. Also a lot of this comes down to money. Guido, Rasmus, Matz all push the developments in their languages as part of their day jobs. They work at some pretty high profile places too. Larry? I honestly don't know what Larry does. And surprisingly I could find out quickly either. Yes, a lot of banks and other places use Perl, and Perl is not dying as so many like to proclaim. But it needsa lot of push from the top, a lot of evangelism, and more, faster development. Otherwise people just kinda lose interest, you know? Perl is fine. I don't think there will be some great Perl revival but it's not going away either. On Sep 18, 2013 8:24 AM, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: I don't mean to troll. In fact, to quote Stevan Little, I totally asshat Perl :) but when I saw this today: http://wegotcoders.com ... I couldn't help thinking Perl is getting left behind. A contributing factor seems to be the narrow range of Perl books published in recent years despite the Modern Perl renaissance. If you look at the number of Ruby/Rails/Sinatra and Python books published in the last 5 years compared with Perl the contrast is stark. There are stacks of Ruby and Rails books covering very specialised applications. Perl books, by contrast, tend to be just general tomes - Perl Best Practices, Programming Perl, Modern Perl, Pro Perl etc. We have one decent web framework book on Catalyst by Apress, if you discount the first effort by Packt, compared with stacks of Rails and Sinatra books. Take a look at these new, vibrant publishing companies: www.leanpub.com www.pragprog.com Not a single Perl title. Surely Moose, Mojolicious or Dancer would have been a candidate? Something's gone wrong. Is it that publishers are not interested in publishing Perl books or that Perl authors aren't writing about interesting and specific applications of Perl? gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18 September 2013 17:01, Paul LeoNerd leon...@leonerd.org.uk wrote: On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 16:45:10 +0100 Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: If you don't agree, do feel free to give the titles of a few hypothetical Perl books that you would be prepared to pay £30 for. Asynchronous Perl - Achieving large-scale parallel concurrency without paying large costs in shared memory or fine-grained locking. I would be prepared to pay £30 to write such a book. +1 me too /AOL -- Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 2:49 AM, Philippe Bruhat (BooK)
philippe.bru...@free.fr wrote:
Some of the secret ops are actually awesome, used in production code,
and deserve to be better known. From the top of my head: 0+ !! @{[]} ()x!!
Seriously. Perl's lack of a string eval interpolation operator (à la Ruby's
#{...}) is a real hole in the language.
Paul
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18 Sep 2013, at 21:03, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: On 18/09/2013 18:48, Peter Corlett wrote: Dancer and Mojolicious are lightweight, DBIx::Class only slightly less so, and are not separately enough material for a full-sized book. At best, you're talking a 100 page print-on-demand labour of love. I've come across no less than 3 Sinatra books so why should a Dancer book be considered lightweight? Sinatra is a library used for constructing web frameworks. Oh, and look, I see Lincoln Stein's CGI.pm book right there on my shelf. Sure, it's an awful book, but I bet at least two of those Sinatra books are as well. Mojolicious and Moose *have* such a book, and although I can't find the ISBN for the Moose book, Mojolicious's is http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3848200953/improtripe-21. I don't think a book published purely in German is that relevant. People who speak Mandarin, Hindi or Spanish no doubt have much the same opinion of books published purely in English. [...] The and Perl makes all the difference. If I'm a new developer choosing a language and I see RESTful APIs with Python/PHP/Ruby and nothing from Perl it may influence my choice of language even if there is a chapter tucked away in a Catalyst book somewhere. Whether it's marketing or not, Ruby and Python are taking the initiative, as I see it, by producing plenty of books which combine the language with another technology. You may not like it but it seems to interest developers. I didn't ask which books you would like to exist to sit unsold in bookshops on the off-chance they might influence other people's opinion. I asked which books you would buy with your own money. As it happens, I own a copy of REST in Practice. I fished it out of my to read pile and given it a quick skim. The handful of examples within are in C# and Java, but it's not called RESTful APIs with C#/Java for a reason: this is a book about REST itself and some of the common RESTful protocols, not a programming textbook. That you apparently desire this book to also include a tutorial on the various Perl APIs so as to spoon-feed the exact answers says more about you and/or your opinion of other developers than the state of the Perl publishing market.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Sep 19, 2013 2:39 PM, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: On 18 Sep 2013, at 21:03, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: On 18/09/2013 18:48, Peter Corlett wrote: Dancer and Mojolicious are lightweight, DBIx::Class only slightly less so, and are not separately enough material for a full-sized book. At best, you're talking a 100 page print-on-demand labour of love. I've come across no less than 3 Sinatra books so why should a Dancer book be considered lightweight? Sinatra is a library used for constructing web frameworks. Oh, and look, I see Lincoln Stein's CGI.pm book right there on my shelf. Sure, it's an awful book, but I bet at least two of those Sinatra books are as well. Mojolicious and Moose *have* such a book, and although I can't find the ISBN for the Moose book, Mojolicious's is http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3848200953/improtripe-21. I don't think a book published purely in German is that relevant. People who speak Mandarin, Hindi or Spanish no doubt have much the same opinion of books published purely in English. [...] The and Perl makes all the difference. If I'm a new developer choosing a language and I see RESTful APIs with Python/PHP/Ruby and nothing from Perl it may influence my choice of language even if there is a chapter tucked away in a Catalyst book somewhere. Whether it's marketing or not, Ruby and Python are taking the initiative, as I see it, by producing plenty of books which combine the language with another technology. You may not like it but it seems to interest developers. I didn't ask which books you would like to exist to sit unsold in bookshops on the off-chance they might influence other people's opinion. I asked which books you would buy with your own money. As it happens, I own a copy of REST in Practice. I fished it out of my to read pile and given it a quick skim. The handful of examples within are in C# and Java, but it's not called RESTful APIs with C#/Java for a reason: this is a book about REST itself and some of the common RESTful protocols, not a programming textbook. That you apparently desire this book to also include a tutorial on the various Perl APIs so as to spoon-feed the exact answers says more about you and/or your opinion of other developers than the state of the Perl publishing market. Well hold on just a minute there. One of the primary reasons Perl got to be hugely popular is exactly because books like Programming Perl and Learning Perl spoonfed the answers to new users. If the science of learning has taught us anything, it's that spoonfeeding answers in a constructive learning environment works very well. It isn't for seasoned programmers who are comfortable with just reading api docs, but my understanding of this thread is that we're talking about more junior programmers who would benefit from learning in a more spoonfed way. There's nothing wrong with that.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 19/09/2013 19:28, Peter Corlett wrote: I don't think a book published purely in German is that relevant. People who speak Mandarin, Hindi or Spanish no doubt have much the same opinion of books published purely in English. Relevant as in relevant to solving the suggested dearth of applied Perl titles. I didn't ask which books you would like to exist to sit unsold in bookshops on the off-chance they might influence other people's opinion. I asked which books you would buy with your own money. The original post raised the issue of what is available to new developers in terms of generating mindshare for Perl as a choice of language. I've been in Perl for a while so it's not about me. That you apparently desire this book to also include a tutorial on the various Perl APIs so as to spoon-feed the exact answers says more about you and/or your opinion of other developers than the state of the Perl publishing market. Again, it's not about me. It's about what's out there in other scripting languages and how that affects mindshare for new Perl developers. The REST example was used only to make a point. The fact that you can get by on RFCs and 15-year-old CGI books is irrelevant. A lot of new developers look at what's on the (virtual) bookshelves and get a sense of which languages are more active. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 19/09/2013 19:28, Peter Corlett wrote: As it happens, I own a copy of REST in Practice. I fished it out of my to read pile and given it a quick skim. The handful of examples within are in C# and Java, but it's not called RESTful APIs with C#/Java for a reason: this is a book about REST itself and some of the common RESTful protocols, not a programming textbook. For similar reasons (I assume) the excellent The Art Of Unit Testing has with examples in .NET printed in a much smaller font, in grey, in a light weight typeface, on a white background: http://tinyurl.com/osherove-unit-testing-1e The language is irrelevant. That link, incidentally, is to the first edition, which is a very good book indeed. There's a second edition out next week, which I've not seen. -- David Cantrell | Reality Engineer, Ministry of Information NANOG makes me want to unplug everything and hide under the bed -- brian d foy
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 19 Sep 2013, at 20:39, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: [...] Again, it's not about me. It's about what's out there in other scripting languages and how that affects mindshare for new Perl developers. The REST example was used only to make a point. The fact that you can get by on RFCs and 15-year-old CGI books is irrelevant. A lot of new developers look at what's on the (virtual) bookshelves and get a sense of which languages are more active. So what? The Perl community is not a cult or dotcom hell-bent on growth. If somebody new discovers Perl and uses it, that's great. If they don't, I'm cool with that too. You clearly disagree. I'm also cool with that. However, your petulant whinges on this mailing list aren't going to achieve anything, except perhaps to add your name to a few killfiles. If you are so passionate about seeing new niche Perl books written as you are making out, you had better fire up your editor and get cracking. Or to use an infamous Perl acronym, STFUAWSC. Except C stands for copy.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 20/09/2013, at 9:21, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: If you are so passionate about seeing new niche Perl books written as you are making out, you had better fire up your editor and get cracking. Many publishers prefer msword ;)
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 4:21 PM, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: If somebody new discovers Perl and uses it, that's great. If they don't, I'm cool with that too. Well if perl doesn't attract new developers, and the existing user base is a diminishing set, perl will eventually run out of developers. But maybe you don't care about that too, and you'll be alone in your shed with your aging perl binary Commodore 64... ;) Paul
Perl publishing and attracting new developers
I don't mean to troll. In fact, to quote Stevan Little, I totally asshat Perl :) but when I saw this today: http://wegotcoders.com ... I couldn't help thinking Perl is getting left behind. A contributing factor seems to be the narrow range of Perl books published in recent years despite the Modern Perl renaissance. If you look at the number of Ruby/Rails/Sinatra and Python books published in the last 5 years compared with Perl the contrast is stark. There are stacks of Ruby and Rails books covering very specialised applications. Perl books, by contrast, tend to be just general tomes - Perl Best Practices, Programming Perl, Modern Perl, Pro Perl etc. We have one decent web framework book on Catalyst by Apress, if you discount the first effort by Packt, compared with stacks of Rails and Sinatra books. Take a look at these new, vibrant publishing companies: www.leanpub.com www.pragprog.com Not a single Perl title. Surely Moose, Mojolicious or Dancer would have been a candidate? Something's gone wrong. Is it that publishers are not interested in publishing Perl books or that Perl authors aren't writing about interesting and specific applications of Perl? gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
Funny, you usually do give the strong impression that you're trolling at best, and that you don't read the replies other people send, so I'm probably wasting my time here... However, I'm going to turn this question round and ask which publishers you've approached to offer them Perl books? /joel On 18 September 2013 14:14, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: I don't mean to troll. In fact, to quote Stevan Little, I totally asshat Perl :) but when I saw this today: http://wegotcoders.com ... I couldn't help thinking Perl is getting left behind. A contributing factor seems to be the narrow range of Perl books published in recent years despite the Modern Perl renaissance. If you look at the number of Ruby/Rails/Sinatra and Python books published in the last 5 years compared with Perl the contrast is stark. There are stacks of Ruby and Rails books covering very specialised applications. Perl books, by contrast, tend to be just general tomes - Perl Best Practices, Programming Perl, Modern Perl, Pro Perl etc. We have one decent web framework book on Catalyst by Apress, if you discount the first effort by Packt, compared with stacks of Rails and Sinatra books. Take a look at these new, vibrant publishing companies: www.leanpub.com www.pragprog.com Not a single Perl title. Surely Moose, Mojolicious or Dancer would have been a candidate? Something's gone wrong. Is it that publishers are not interested in publishing Perl books or that Perl authors aren't writing about interesting and specific applications of Perl? gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 01:14:54PM +0100, gvim wrote: I don't mean to troll. In fact, to quote Stevan Little, I totally asshat Perl :) but when I saw this today: http://wegotcoders.com ... I couldn't help thinking Perl is getting left behind. This looks like a one-man shop, so I guess the kind of training they offer depend on the sole instructor's bagage. Something's gone wrong. Is it that publishers are not interested in publishing Perl books or that Perl authors aren't writing about interesting and specific applications of Perl? Not sure what the answer is to that one, probably a little bit of both. I was about to mention a Perl book published in France recently, but it turns out it's been three years since... -- Philippe Bruhat (BooK) No matter how you dress a cow, it still gives milk. (Moral from Groo The Wanderer #46 (Epic))
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
Probably a book about trolling on London.pm would be most entertaining. On 18 September 2013 14:07, Joel Bernstein j...@fysh.org wrote: Funny, you usually do give the strong impression that you're trolling at best, and that you don't read the replies other people send, so I'm probably wasting my time here... However, I'm going to turn this question round and ask which publishers you've approached to offer them Perl books? /joel On 18 September 2013 14:14, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: I don't mean to troll. In fact, to quote Stevan Little, I totally asshat Perl :) but when I saw this today: http://wegotcoders.com ... I couldn't help thinking Perl is getting left behind. A contributing factor seems to be the narrow range of Perl books published in recent years despite the Modern Perl renaissance. If you look at the number of Ruby/Rails/Sinatra and Python books published in the last 5 years compared with Perl the contrast is stark. There are stacks of Ruby and Rails books covering very specialised applications. Perl books, by contrast, tend to be just general tomes - Perl Best Practices, Programming Perl, Modern Perl, Pro Perl etc. We have one decent web framework book on Catalyst by Apress, if you discount the first effort by Packt, compared with stacks of Rails and Sinatra books. Take a look at these new, vibrant publishing companies: www.leanpub.com www.pragprog.com Not a single Perl title. Surely Moose, Mojolicious or Dancer would have been a candidate? Something's gone wrong. Is it that publishers are not interested in publishing Perl books or that Perl authors aren't writing about interesting and specific applications of Perl? gvim -- Jerome Eteve +44(0)7738864546 http://www.eteve.net/
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 14:07, Joel Bernstein wrote: Funny, you usually do give the strong impression that you're trolling at best, and that you don't read the replies other people send, so I'm probably wasting my time here... However, I'm going to turn this question round and ask which publishers you've approached to offer them Perl books? /joel None, but what does that have to do with the question/concern I raised? gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 14:17, Philippe Bruhat (BooK) wrote: This looks like a one-man shop, so I guess the kind of training they offer depend on the sole instructor's bagage. Here are 2 more: http://www.makersacademy.com https://generalassemb.ly/education/web-development-immersive gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 14:21, Jérôme Étévé wrote: Probably a book about trolling on London.pm would be most entertaining. I think it reflects badly on our community when any concern raised about something lacking is automatically dismissed as trolling. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18 September 2013 15:50, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: None, but what does that have to do with the question/concern I raised? Again, I seriously wonder if you're trolling, but since this seems a difficult concept: where do you think books come from? Without people proposing them, they don't get written. If you want more books, have you considered writing one? Someone has to. I'll expand on this below. As far as I can tell from talking to authors and publishers, the amount of work a book requires (and do note that e.g. Packt have released books which had skimped on the required work and as such read like bad first drafts rather than finished titles) is not adequately compensated by the author's cut of the sales that even a popular Perl title manages. This is the major reason why publishers aren't queueing up to produce more books. Additionally many of the key titles were written years ago and haven't required updating. So the chances of a Perl book selling well are small. At the very least you need an author prepared to make no money and give up significant time to produce the content, and a publisher prepared to devote editing/typesetting/etc time to producing a book that will generate little to no profit. Basically it's a small market that requires anybody who wants to enter it to give up a profit motive or any reasonable price on their free time. Is that what you were asking? /joel
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
Nothing specific, it was more a (failed) attempt to make a general (humorous ?) comment :) Sorry. On 18 September 2013 14:57, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: On 18/09/2013 14:21, Jérôme Étévé wrote: Probably a book about trolling on London.pm would be most entertaining. I think it reflects badly on our community when any concern raised about something lacking is automatically dismissed as trolling. gvim -- Jerome Eteve +44(0)7738864546 http://www.eteve.net/
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 14:21:59 +0100, Jérôme Étévé jerome.et...@gmail.com wrote: Probably a book about trolling on London.pm would be most entertaining. Perhaps, Perl off the Hook: trolling for the future of a moribund language? -r
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 01:14:54PM +0100, gvim wrote: Something's gone wrong. Is it that publishers are not interested in publishing Perl books or that Perl authors aren't writing about interesting and specific applications of Perl? Those are the only two options you consider? How about there aren't enough people actually buying Perl books? I'm sure publishers would love to publish Perl books if they can make money of it. But the only way to make money of books is to actually sell them. Abigail
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 02:57:33PM +0100, gvim wrote: On 18/09/2013 14:21, Jérôme Étévé wrote: Probably a book about trolling on London.pm would be most entertaining. I think it reflects badly on our community when any concern raised about something lacking is automatically dismissed as trolling. Hi, gvim. I think Jérôme was being silly rather than dismissive. Also, I think your question is quite open-ended and has all sorts of answers, most of which will be hard to validate. This sort of discussion perhaps lends itself better to chat over a few drinks than a mailing list. Having said that, there's no harm in asking it here. If you come along to our next social (Thursday, October 3rd) I'll buy you a drink and we can have a chat about this. I don't think we've met before as I'm fairly sure I'd remember meeting someone called gvim. Tom
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 14:59, Joel Bernstein wrote: Again, I seriously wonder if you're trolling Wikipedia defines trolling as: a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog), either accidentally or with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion - Sowing discord: not guilty - Starting arguments: not guilty - Upsetting people: not guilty - Inflammatory: not guilty - Extraneous: not guilty - Off-topic: not guilty - Intent of provoking an emotional response: not guilty - Disrupting on-topic discussion: not guilty difficult concept: where do you think books come from? Without people proposing them, they don't get written. If you want more books, have you considered writing one? Someone has to. I'll expand on this below. My question was about what others perceive to be the reasons for the dearth of Perl books and the lack of range in subject matter compared with the proliferation of new titles in the Ruby and Python communities. I have already commented on my qualification for writing a book on Perl. As far as I can tell from talking to authors and publishers, the amount of work a book requires (and do note that e.g. Packt have released books which had skimped on the required work and as such read like bad first drafts rather than finished titles) is not adequately compensated by the author's cut of the sales that even a popular Perl title manages. This is the major reason why publishers aren't queueing up to produce more books. Additionally many of the key titles were written years ago and haven't required updating. So the chances of a Perl book selling well are small. At Really? Perl Cookbook, for example, is badly in need of an update as is Object-Oriented Perl now that we have Moose. the very least you need an author prepared to make no money and give up significant time to produce the content, and a publisher prepared to devote editing/typesetting/etc time to producing a book that will generate little to no profit. Basically it's a small market that requires anybody who wants to enter it to give up a profit motive or any reasonable price on their free time. These considerations also apply to Ruby and Python authors but it hasn't stopped them pumping them out by the barrel-load. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
Not any concern, but more those expressed in your unique style, and with memory of recent threads where you ignored useful responses and wilfully misunderstood longsuffering respondents. This doesn't seem to happen with other people. On 18 September 2013 15:57, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: On 18/09/2013 14:21, Jérôme Étévé wrote: Probably a book about trolling on London.pm would be most entertaining. I think it reflects badly on our community when any concern raised about something lacking is automatically dismissed as trolling. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18 September 2013 14:59, Joel Bernstein j...@fysh.org wrote: where do you think books come from? Well, when a daddy book and a mummy book love each other very much... As far as I can tell from talking to authors and publishers, the amount of work a book requires snip ... will be the same for a Perl book as for a Ruby one. is not adequately compensated by the author's cut of the sales that even a popular Perl title manages It's not unreasonable to *suggest* that there may be a correlation with either enthusiasm of Ruby programmers to write the books, or the market size for making a return on the investment of time. osf'
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 03:22:06PM +0100, gvim wrote: On 18/09/2013 14:59, Joel Bernstein wrote: Again, I seriously wonder if you're trolling Wikipedia defines trolling as: I don't care. Please let's not discuss what trolling means or whether anyone's doing it. Let's keep this thread to its original topic. If anyone wants to start new threads, that's fine, as long as they're not about the semantics of trolling or whether anyone's doing it. If anyone has a problem with anyone else's behaviour here, please contact me off-list and wel'l discuss it. Tom (London.pm leader)
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 15:15, Tom Hukins wrote: Hi, gvim. I think Jérôme was being silly rather than dismissive. Also, I think your question is quite open-ended and has all sorts of answers, most of which will be hard to validate. This sort of discussion perhaps lends itself better to chat over a few drinks than a mailing list. Having said that, there's no harm in asking it here. If you come along to our next social (Thursday, October 3rd) I'll buy you a drink and we can have a chat about this. I don't think we've met before as I'm fairly sure I'd remember meeting someone called gvim. Tom A . alright then :) gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Sep 18, 2013, at 4:57 PM, Jason Clifford ja...@ukfsn.org wrote: On 2013-09-18 15:22, gvim wrote: All of this is not to say there are no new books. There is a new edition of Mastering Perl on the way. Don't forget Ovid's Beginning Perl, http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781118013847.do :-) Liz
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 15:57:27 +0100 Jason Clifford ja...@ukfsn.org wrote: I wonder whether part of the answer to this question lies in the fact that the things that could be covered in Perl books about frameworks, Moose, etc are fairly well documented and that the documentation is easily available. Why should I spend money on books which wont necessarily contain anything that I cannot already get more conveniently and at less expense by reading the POD? Perhaps that just suggests that any such book needs to be more about vague concepts that were as applicable five years ago as now and such are likely to still be in five years time. Individual modules come and go; it's the bigger concepts that tend to stay. -- Paul LeoNerd Evans leon...@leonerd.org.uk ICQ# 4135350 | Registered Linux# 179460 http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 04:15:08PM +0200, Abigail wrote: On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 01:14:54PM +0100, gvim wrote: Something's gone wrong. Is it that publishers are not interested in publishing Perl books or that Perl authors aren't writing about interesting and specific applications of Perl? Those are the only two options you consider? How about there aren't enough people actually buying Perl books? I'm sure publishers would love to publish Perl books if they can make money of it. But the only way to make money of books is to actually sell them. Yes, exactly. To me, more Python and Ruby books suggest that both are selling well. So the question then becomes why are more people buying Python and Ruby books? My guess would be that (proportionally) more people feel the need to learn those two languages. Maybe everyone already feels that they know Perl well enough to blag an interview. Nicholas Clark
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 2013-09-18 15:22, gvim wrote: My question was about what others perceive to be the reasons for the dearth of Perl books and the lack of range in subject matter compared with the proliferation of new titles in the Ruby and Python communities. I wonder whether part of the answer to this question lies in the fact that the things that could be covered in Perl books about frameworks, Moose, etc are fairly well documented and that the documentation is easily available. Why should I spend money on books which wont necessarily contain anything that I cannot already get more conveniently and at less expense by reading the POD? This is not to say that the above means there is no possible demand for such new books but it *may* mean that a large part of the potential market (ie those already using Perl) wont be interested. These considerations also apply to Ruby and Python authors but it hasn't stopped them pumping them out by the barrel-load. Is the easily available and free documentation for those languages as good as that available for Perl? Of course there is also the possibility that publishers are generally reacting to perceived market demand and they simply perceive more demand for python/ruby/... All of this is not to say there are no new books. There is a new edition of Mastering Perl on the way.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 13:14:54 +0100 gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: Something's gone wrong. Is it that publishers are not interested in publishing Perl books or that Perl authors aren't writing about interesting and specific applications of Perl? Not wishing to troll in reply, but I'd be happy to write a book. I just have no idea how to do so. The actual putting words on paper (does anyone use actual paper any more?) I can do, it's all the rest of it - the finding a publisher, talking to them, etc... If you actually want more books writing, explain to us (or me at least) how to get this lot done, hook us up with an actual publishing-type person, and I'll write you one. -- Paul LeoNerd Evans leon...@leonerd.org.uk ICQ# 4135350 | Registered Linux# 179460 http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 15:57, Jason Clifford wrote: I wonder whether part of the answer to this question lies in the fact that the things that could be covered in Perl books about frameworks, Moose, etc are fairly well documented and that the documentation is easily available. Ruby and Rails are well documented: http://ruby-doc.org/ http://rubyonrails.org/documentation ... but the books sell very well. All of this is not to say there are no new books. There is a new edition of Mastering Perl on the way. Considering the last edition was published in 2007 I would rather have seen a new Perl Cookbook, Object-Oriented Perl or, better still, some new titles on specific applications of Perl, eg. Perl for Android (ok, ok but you get my drift), Perl REST APIs or Web Development with Dancer/Mojolicious. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 16:10, Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote: Don't forget Ovid's Beginning Perl, http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781118013847.do :-) More generic Perl books. Exactly what we don't need. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/13 16:07, Paul LeoNerd Evans wrote: I just have no idea how to do so. The actual putting words on paper (does anyone use actual paper any more?) I can do, it's all the rest of it - the finding a publisher, talking to them, etc... If you actually want more books writing, explain to us (or me at least) how to get this lot done, hook us up with an actual publishing-type person, and I'll write you one. Will this do? :-) http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/intro.csp I think you'll find similar links on other publishers' web sites too. Cheers f.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 16:07, Paul LeoNerd Evans wrote: Not wishing to troll in reply, but I'd be happy to write a book. I just have no idea how to do so. The actual putting words on paper (does anyone use actual paper any more?) I can do, it's all the rest of it - the finding a publisher, talking to them, etc... If you actually want more books writing, explain to us (or me at least) how to get this lot done, hook us up with an actual publishing-type person, and I'll write you one. As I'm not a publisher or writer, nor commissioning a work for purely personal consumption, I can only suggest consulting with Ruby and Python authors and publishers. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
GVIM what about Sublime ? vim, gvim, emacs, eclipse will be left behind after sublime came out ? On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Paul LeoNerd leon...@leonerd.org.ukwrote: On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 13:14:54 +0100 gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: Something's gone wrong. Is it that publishers are not interested in publishing Perl books or that Perl authors aren't writing about interesting and specific applications of Perl? Not wishing to troll in reply, but I'd be happy to write a book. I just have no idea how to do so. The actual putting words on paper (does anyone use actual paper any more?) I can do, it's all the rest of it - the finding a publisher, talking to them, etc... If you actually want more books writing, explain to us (or me at least) how to get this lot done, hook us up with an actual publishing-type person, and I'll write you one. -- Paul LeoNerd Evans leon...@leonerd.org.uk ICQ# 4135350 | Registered Linux# 179460 http://www.leonerd.org.uk/
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
Would you care to explain why you think that? On 18 September 2013 16:21, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: On 18/09/2013 16:10, Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote: Don't forget Ovid's Beginning Perl, http://shop.oreilly.com/** product/9781118013847.dohttp://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781118013847.do :-) More generic Perl books. Exactly what we don't need. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Paul LeoNerd leon...@leonerd.org.ukwrote: I would be prepared to pay £30 to write such a book. My Paypal account is the same as this email address. Please send me the money, and a copy of the book when you're done.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 16:35, Hernan Lopes wrote: GVIM what about Sublime ? vim, gvim, emacs, eclipse will be left behind after sublime came out ? :) There have been quite a few new, interesting Vim books published in recent years. Here's one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Practical-Vim-Thought-Pragmatic-Programmers/dp/1934356980/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8qid=1379519971sr=8-2keywords=vim+in+books gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 16:45, Peter Corlett wrote: On 18 Sep 2013, at 13:14, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: No, it's because pretty much all of the books that can only be written about Perl have already been written. What's left is of such minor appeal that no sensible publisher will touch it. If you don't agree, do feel free to give the titles of a few hypothetical Perl books that you would be prepared to pay £30 for. Given how many published writers there are on this list, you may even provide suitable inspiration! OK, here goes: Web Development with Dancer Web Development with Mojolicous Object-Oriented Perl with Moose Agile Development with Perl Moose RESTful APIs with Perl HTML5, Javascript Perl Network Programming with Perl (maybe an update from Lincoln Stein) Scientific Programming with Perl Data Processing with Perl and DBIx::Class The Modern Perl Cookbook Analysing Big Data with Perl gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18 Sep 2013, at 13:14, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: [...] Something's gone wrong. Is it that publishers are not interested in publishing Perl books or that Perl authors aren't writing about interesting and specific applications of Perl? No, it's because pretty much all of the books that can only be written about Perl have already been written. What's left is of such minor appeal that no sensible publisher will touch it. If you don't agree, do feel free to give the titles of a few hypothetical Perl books that you would be prepared to pay £30 for. Given how many published writers there are on this list, you may even provide suitable inspiration!
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 16:45:10 +0100 Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: If you don't agree, do feel free to give the titles of a few hypothetical Perl books that you would be prepared to pay £30 for. Asynchronous Perl - Achieving large-scale parallel concurrency without paying large costs in shared memory or fine-grained locking. I would be prepared to pay £30 to write such a book. :) -- Paul LeoNerd Evans leon...@leonerd.org.uk ICQ# 4135350 | Registered Linux# 179460 http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 16:47, Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote: Disagree. The author has put a lot of effort into making a *new* introductory book about modern Perl. Your easy dismissal of that effort may be exactly the reason why you don't see more Perl books. If the community itself cannot appreciate the effort put into them, how can you expect the public at large outside of the echo chamber to appreciate them? Liz That's why I'm posting here, in a contained environment, rather than on some public forum. I have read and really like Ovid's Beginning Perl but in the context of my original post it adds weight to my point that Perl books tend to be generic and we need more diversity of subject matter, particularly applied Perl. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Sep 18, 2013, at 5:21 PM, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: On 18/09/2013 16:10, Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote: Don't forget Ovid's Beginning Perl, http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781118013847.do :-) More generic Perl books. Exactly what we don't need. Disagree. The author has put a lot of effort into making a *new* introductory book about modern Perl. Your easy dismissal of that effort may be exactly the reason why you don't see more Perl books. If the community itself cannot appreciate the effort put into them, how can you expect the public at large outside of the echo chamber to appreciate them? Liz
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18/09/2013 16:36, Schmoo wrote: Would you care to explain why you think that? See the middle paragraph of my original post. gvim
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 17:20:28 +0100 gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: Network Programming with Perl (maybe an update from Lincoln Stein) This one I could easily cover as you'll be wanting to do it async (see below). Analysing Big Data with Perl Big data generally implies noSQL or similar - perhaps see Cassandra, a database I've just been hacking on and am writing a proper Perl connector module for. Which is async. Using futures. Which is very much the way Cassandra seems to be going in all of its language bindings. -- Paul LeoNerd Evans leon...@leonerd.org.uk ICQ# 4135350 | Registered Linux# 179460 http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 19 September 2013 03:04, Nicholas Clark n...@ccl4.org wrote: Maybe everyone already feels that they know Perl well enough to blag an interview. Maybe an interesting, and uniquely disruptive topic for a book could be You don't know Perl ( or something along those lines ), a book with a similar intent to Modern Perl, ... but targeted explicitly at people who think they know Perl, but aren't really part of the perl community, people who learnt Perl from reading horrible scripts that have been copy pasted around the internet. A refresher book, a book explicitly for the purpose of communicating things that have come of age since before 5.14 , the new jazz, the new stuff. Sort of like a less formal, and less outdated PBP. It would be even really ideal if we waited to 5.20, because 5.20 is a nice round number. Then maybe a less disruptive title that mimics other existing publications like Perl 5.20 for Perl Programmers or something like that. Though for a title like that to really have weight and to get the ball rolling, getting it published by one of the major publishers would probably be helpful, due to chicken-egg. ( ie: People who already have perl literature by a given publisher are more likely to be aware of, and acquire newer literature by the same publisher, because brand identity has a part to play in reputability ) -- Kent
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18 Sep 2013, at 17:20, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: [...] OK, here goes: Your list of books mostly splits into two distinct groups. The first group are books which are primarily about Perl technologies: Web Development with Dancer Web Development with Mojolicous Object-Oriented Perl with Moose Data Processing with Perl and DBIx::Class The Modern Perl Cookbook Dancer and Mojolicious are lightweight, DBIx::Class only slightly less so, and are not separately enough material for a full-sized book. At best, you're talking a 100 page print-on-demand labour of love. Mojolicious and Moose *have* such a book, and although I can't find the ISBN for the Moose book, Mojolicious's is http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3848200953/improtripe-21. Material on DBIx::Class is rolled into other books at an appropriate level, e.g. Ovid's Beginning Perl (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1118013840/improtripe-21) introduces it, Jonathan Rockway's Catalyst (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1847190952/improtripe-21) covers using it with Catalyst, and so on. The hypothetical Modern Perl Cookbook is a layering violation. Perl Cookbook is a collection of short hints and tips on how to do simple tasks. Modern Perl is how to architect a large system. That's two separate topics, and thus two separate books. Which already exist. Then you have books where you've taken some other topic, and just stick with Perl on the end: Agile Development with Perl Moose RESTful APIs with Perl HTML5, Javascript Perl Network Programming with Perl (maybe an update from Lincoln Stein) Scientific Programming with Perl What does the and Perl add to the material? It may as well say and Intercal for all the good it does. Analysing Big Data with Perl This is also just a with Perl title, but merits picking out. Big Data is a nebulous term of art much like Web 2.0 is, and roughly means the fashionable technologies we're using with a big layer of marketing slathered on so people don't realise it's mostly hot air. Perl isn't part of the Big Data clique. Conversely, when Perl is used to solve the exact same sort of problems, it's not called Big Data.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18 September 2013 18:26, Kent Fredric kentfred...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe an interesting, and uniquely disruptive topic for a book could be You don't know Perl ( or something along those lines ), a book with a similar intent to Modern Perl, ... but targeted explicitly at people who think they know Perl, but aren't really part of the perl community, people who learnt Perl from reading horrible scripts that have been copy pasted around the internet. Now *that* is a great title, and a real need specifically for Perl. I want this book. osf'
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18 Sep 2013, at 18:26, Kent Fredric kentfred...@gmail.com wrote: [...] Maybe an interesting, and uniquely disruptive topic for a book could be You don't know Perl ( or something along those lines ), a book with a similar intent to Modern Perl, ... but targeted explicitly at people who think they know Perl, but aren't really part of the perl community, people who learnt Perl from reading horrible scripts that have been copy pasted around the internet. I've certainly been toying with writing something like that for fun. The working title was The Bullshitter's Guide to Perl. Which obviously needs some work in itself. It would probably also gore a few sacred cows here.
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
On 18 September 2013 18:48, Peter Corlett ab...@cabal.org.uk wrote: The hypothetical Modern Perl Cookbook is a layering violation. Perl Cookbook is a collection of short hints and tips on how to do simple tasks. Modern Perl is how to architect a large system. That's two separate topics, and thus two separate books. Which already exist. I disagree with your dismissal of that as a layering violation. Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, which is vastly more interesting than the tedious Go4 book on OO patterns, looks at patterns from small things like Waist high shelf to city-wide ones Mosaic of subcultures. I don't think there's any reason why a cookbook (which can be effectively structured like a pattern language) shouldn't look at larger sweep issues too. osf'
Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers
Writing a book is fun so long as you are backed by a good team (co-authors, editor, tech reviewer, project manager, copy editor and a mate who happens to write dictionaries for a living spotting the copy editor's slip-ups). From a purely financial perspective it doesn't pay well, but so long as the book ends up well regarded (and maybe if it doesn't) it can be good for the career. It's certainly the best thing I've ever done in terms of generating instant credibility for myself. If you're interested in writing a perl book, I would recommend going with chromatic's mob, and doing it as a not-especially-commercial proposition. While I got to feed my family, and a nice musical instrument from the Catalyst book it was: a. the subsequent benefits (I got some opportunities to do small team, high impact stuff with perl which previously seemed closed to me) and b. the ability to point people asking questions at the relevant part of the book/downloadable code that previously would take long IRC sessions. Although the book sold reasonably well - should pay back its advance this year, and continues to sell slowly - the publisher hasn't (yet) approached me for a new edition. Anyone who wants to approach Apress about a 2nd edition, please do. If they're interested, you can have first author slot, so long as you let me keep an eye over your shoulder while you're updating it. Applicatants should send me an outline of a chapter to replace the final chapter on Reaction which is no longer relevant. The outline should be three headings deep, and contain a chunk of prose (e.g. the introductory paragraphs). This is essentially a micro version of the process that publishers normally require for a book proposal. Maybe the chapter should be replaced with something about web programming with Catalyst for async applications, or job queues or similar. All example code should result in a minimal working application. On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 6:03 AM, gvim gvi...@gmail.com wrote: On 18/09/2013 18:48, Peter Corlett wrote: Dancer and Mojolicious are lightweight, DBIx::Class only slightly less so, and are not separately enough material for a full-sized book. At best, you're talking a 100 page print-on-demand labour of love. I've come across no less than 3 Sinatra books so why should a Dancer book be considered lightweight? Mojolicious and Moose *have* such a book, and although I can't find the ISBN for the Moose book, Mojolicious's is http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/** obidos/ASIN/3848200953/**improtripe-21http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3848200953/improtripe-21 . I don't think a book published purely in German is that relevant. The hypothetical Modern Perl Cookbook is a layering violation. Perl Cookbook is a collection of short hints and tips on how to do simple tasks. Modern Perl is how to architect a large system. That's two separate topics, and thus two separate books. Which already exist. Perl Cookbook is 10 years old so not relevant to Perl 5.10+, ie. Modern Perl. Hence my layering violation. Python Cookbook has had 2 new editions since the 1st edition appeared in 2002. All I'm saying is that when major pillars of the Perl library fall behind like this it gives the impression that the language is also dated. We don't see it that way from the inside, of course, but I'm addressing how Perl appears to new developers making a choice of language. Then you have books where you've taken some other topic, and just stick with Perl on the end: Agile Development with Perl Moose RESTful APIs with Perl HTML5, Javascript Perl Network Programming with Perl (maybe an update from Lincoln Stein) Scientific Programming with Perl What does the and Perl add to the material? It may as well say and Intercal for all the good it does. The and Perl makes all the difference. If I'm a new developer choosing a language and I see RESTful APIs with Python/PHP/Ruby and nothing from Perl it may influence my choice of language even if there is a chapter tucked away in a Catalyst book somewhere. Whether it's marketing or not, Ruby and Python are taking the initiative, as I see it, by producing plenty of books which combine the language with another technology. You may not like it but it seems to interest developers. Analysing Big Data with Perl This is also just a with Perl title, but merits picking out. Big Data is a nebulous term of art much like Web 2.0 is, and roughly means the fashionable technologies we're using with a big layer of marketing slathered on so people don't realise it's mostly hot air. I'm sure your purist's aversion to mixing Perl with any other technology serves you well but the fact remains that Ruby and Python seem to have benefited from doing a little of what the publishers want. Contrasted with the dearth of Perl publications a newcomer to the scene can be forgiven for surmising that Perl has become less relevant. gvim
