Re: Writing About Perl
On 10/13/2011 06:42 PM, Dave Cross wrote: http://dave.org.uk/LXF151.code_perl.pdf Hopefully this goes without saying, but I strongly suspect we'll be far more popular with the people at LXF if we _don't_ spread their copyrighted material all over the internet. Dave...
Re: Writing About Perl
On 08/23/2011 11:39 AM, Dave Cross wrote: So, purely hypothetically... If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you write about? [ time passes ] It might look something like this. http://dave.org.uk/LXF151.code_perl.pdf I have a commission for one more (and perhaps another after that). Dave...
Re: Writing about Perl FOR WEBDEVS
On 2 September 2011 11:57, Mallory van Achterberg wrote: > Leo, > I LOVE the Plack talk that went with those slides. As someone who does > no Perl, they were awesome, they made sense, and they were exciting. > > That's why I suggested a Plack / Dancer app for Dave Cross' article. It's the kind of stuff new people want to learn how to do. Regards, Peter
Re: Writing about Perl FOR WEBDEVS
Leo, I LOVE the Plack talk that went with those slides. As someone who does no Perl, they were awesome, they made sense, and they were exciting. Would love something that brought text to that, and selected slides added as images/references. Also love that those diagrams show many other Perl frameworks in existence as well as the different servers (I had never heard of Starman before the talk). The DB/ORM paper... I think the topic is a good example of something to write about. I would like to make it "friendlier" (as in, starts out with You're a web developer with such and such busy site and you have a DB and you are crawling through SQl (or whatever, in other words, the problem common to developers clearly stated), then on to the meat of the article. So I may try to think up topics that would make most sense for these web dev forums (gonna ask the Programming Team over there what kinds of common problems they/devs encounter and what kinds of solutions they tend to use... because then we know which Perl solutions are good to introduce/write about). I like that perl.org has such a list. cheers, Mallory On Fri, Sep 02, 2011 at 11:10:02AM +0100, Leo Lapworth wrote: > Have you seen http://www.perl.org/about/whitepapers/ - might be a useful > start > (also I'd be interested in publishing any new papers there), but VERY mini > > > By mini-article I mean, about the amount of content you'd > > see at a typical YAPC talk. With diagrams would be great (thinking > > of the Plack diagrams I saw which were done by Miyagawa, excellent). > > > > I've taken Miyagawa's and added some more: > http://www.slideshare.net/ranguard/plack-basics-for-perl-websites-yapceu-2011 > feel free to use the stuff I've added if it helps, the same with > > http://www.slideshare.net/ranguard/dbixclass-introduction-2010 > > Hope that helps. > > Cheers > > Leo
Re: Writing about Perl FOR WEBDEVS
Hi, On 2 September 2011 10:19, Mallory van Achterberg wrote: > I'm planning on getting some people (anyone who is interested) in > writing some "mini-articles" about things where Perl benefits web > developers (things like Plack, frameworks, not so much mail servers > and things). Have you seen http://www.perl.org/about/whitepapers/ - might be a useful start (also I'd be interested in publishing any new papers there), but VERY mini By mini-article I mean, about the amount of content you'd > see at a typical YAPC talk. With diagrams would be great (thinking > of the Plack diagrams I saw which were done by Miyagawa, excellent). > I've taken Miyagawa's and added some more: http://www.slideshare.net/ranguard/plack-basics-for-perl-websites-yapceu-2011 feel free to use the stuff I've added if it helps, the same with http://www.slideshare.net/ranguard/dbixclass-introduction-2010 Hope that helps. Cheers Leo
Re: Writing About Perl
On 25/08/2011, at 12:09 AM, Randal L. Schwartz wrote: >> "Kieren" == Kieren Diment writes: > > Kieren> Writing about perl is like dancing about architecture. > > I dunno. It's been an enabler for pretty good living for a few of us. Yes, I should have put tags around the my comment. Writing a perl book was one of the better career moves that I've made.
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 01:45:58PM +0200, Abigail wrote: > On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 12:24:05PM +0100, Pete Smith top-posted: > > I think that devs are interested in tools that let them get things up > > and running with little effort, so perhaps an article explaining how > > easy it is to use catalyst/dancer/mojo + dbic + plack (with a bit of > > moose thrown in) using distro packages (cpan probably frustrates newbies > > to perl if installation / tests fail) to get a web app up and running in > > a few minutes. > > > > That was the appeal of ruby and rails as far as I can make out. > > > So, the point of the assignment (which is to show how Perl has moved on > in the last 10 years) is going to be "after 10 years, we now can do what > Ruby on Rails can"? You'd be surprised how large the group is then who don't realise that yes, Perl can do these things. A young web developer said on a forum recently, "Perl is too old for me." He uses C#/.NET. Let's change his perception. -Mallory
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 05:05:35PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote: > On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 12:59:42PM +0200, Job van Achterberg wrote: > > On Tue, 2011-08-23 at 11:39 +0100, Dave Cross wrote: > > > So, purely hypothetically... > > > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a > > > 3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of > > > how Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What > > > would you write about? > > Developments in Moose, modern web frameworks, influences of Perl 6? > > None of those are of any interest to people not currently using perl. > > Web frameworks in particular is "so what, what's so special about that?" I disagree. If the audience is looking for frameworks, they're hearing plenty about what Python, Ruby and PHP have to offer. And they're using them for those reasons, I'd say. You have a job to do, and you look for relevant tools. If Perl == 1990's CGI scripts in your mind, you won't go out of your way to see anything you can use in Perl. If one framework did what everyone wanted, why are there so darn many of them?? -Mallory
Re: Writing About Perl
> "Kieren" == Kieren Diment writes: Kieren> Writing about perl is like dancing about architecture. I dunno. It's been an enabler for pretty good living for a few of us. -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/> Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See http://methodsandmessages.posterous.com/ for Smalltalk discussion
Re: Writing About Perl
Writing about perl is like dancing about architecture. With apologies to Thelonious Monk. On 24/08/2011, at 6:31 PM, Hernan Lopes wrote: > And dont forget to say what is cpan.. > 22000 modules > email of developers > automated tests for every module released on all platforms > win/linux/mac/freebsd/solars > easy to search module.. type in 'google' to search google modules, type in > twitter for twitter modules > nice documentation for the modules, with usage example > and it has everything, type in the name of some formula and it will most > likely be found ie. bank formulas, etc > > > On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Peter Edwards wrote: > >> On 23 August 2011 18:11, Leo Lapworth wrote: >> >>> Installing / using / extending Domm's App::Timetracker ( >>> https://metacpan.org/release/App-TimeTracker) might make an interesting >>> article. >>> >>> He gave a talk about it at YAPC::EU >>> http://yapceurope.lv/ye2011/talk/3391(slides: >>> http://domm.plix.at/talks/2011_riga_app_timetracker/) >>> >>> >> Oh that's pretty cool. The git sync idea would go down well with Linux >> hackers. >> >> -Peter >>
Re: Writing About Perl
On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 5:31 AM, Hernan Lopes wrote: > And dont forget to say what is cpan.. > 22000 modules > email of developers > automated tests for every module released on all platforms > win/linux/mac/freebsd/solars ( with reports generated sent to developer > email.. so he can see what went wrong and fix ) > easy to search module.. type in 'google' to search google modules, type in > twitter for twitter modules > nice documentation for the modules, with usage example > and it has everything, type in the name of some formula and it will most > likely be found ie. bank formulas, etc > > > On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Peter Edwards wrote: > >> On 23 August 2011 18:11, Leo Lapworth wrote: >> >> > Installing / using / extending Domm's App::Timetracker ( >> > https://metacpan.org/release/App-TimeTracker) might make an interesting >> > article. >> > >> > He gave a talk about it at YAPC::EU >> > http://yapceurope.lv/ye2011/talk/3391(slides: >> > http://domm.plix.at/talks/2011_riga_app_timetracker/) >> > >> > >> Oh that's pretty cool. The git sync idea would go down well with Linux >> hackers. >> >> -Peter >> > >
Re: Writing About Perl
And dont forget to say what is cpan.. 22000 modules email of developers automated tests for every module released on all platforms win/linux/mac/freebsd/solars easy to search module.. type in 'google' to search google modules, type in twitter for twitter modules nice documentation for the modules, with usage example and it has everything, type in the name of some formula and it will most likely be found ie. bank formulas, etc On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Peter Edwards wrote: > On 23 August 2011 18:11, Leo Lapworth wrote: > > > Installing / using / extending Domm's App::Timetracker ( > > https://metacpan.org/release/App-TimeTracker) might make an interesting > > article. > > > > He gave a talk about it at YAPC::EU > > http://yapceurope.lv/ye2011/talk/3391(slides: > > http://domm.plix.at/talks/2011_riga_app_timetracker/) > > > > > Oh that's pretty cool. The git sync idea would go down well with Linux > hackers. > > -Peter >
Re: Writing About Perl
On 23 August 2011 18:11, Leo Lapworth wrote: > Installing / using / extending Domm's App::Timetracker ( > https://metacpan.org/release/App-TimeTracker) might make an interesting > article. > > He gave a talk about it at YAPC::EU > http://yapceurope.lv/ye2011/talk/3391(slides: > http://domm.plix.at/talks/2011_riga_app_timetracker/) > > Oh that's pretty cool. The git sync idea would go down well with Linux hackers. -Peter
Re: Writing About Perl
On 23/08/2011 19:39, Dave Cross wrote: > >> > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a > 3000 > >> > word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl > had > >> > moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you write > > about? > > That means it needs to go from nothing to a cool working program in less > than 3000 words - taking in modern Perl and best practices en route. > How about extending something instead of starting from nothing? Installing / using / extending Domm's App::Timetracker ( https://metacpan.org/release/App-TimeTracker) might make an interesting article. He gave a talk about it at YAPC::EU http://yapceurope.lv/ye2011/talk/3391(slides: http://domm.plix.at/talks/2011_riga_app_timetracker/) Source could do with a few more comments for my personal tast, anyway - just an idea :) Leo
Re: Writing About Perl
Quoting Leo Lapworth : On 23 August 2011 13:02, Simon Cozens wrote: On 23/08/2011 19:39, Dave Cross wrote: > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 > word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl had > moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you write > about? What's changed in the past ten years? 10 years?... in no particular order.. [ excellent list snipped ] Sorry - I don't have time to write anything more than a cursory list, but there's at least a couple of articles in there, There would certainly be several articles in that list if the title of the article was something like "what has changed in Perl in the last ten years". Unfortunately, the article (perhaps articles, we'll see) needs to be project based. That means it needs to go from nothing to a cool working program in less than 3000 words - taking in modern Perl and best practices en route. If you want to see what we're up against, see: http://perlhacks.com/2011/04/an-open-letter-to-linux-format/ Cheers, Dave...
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 4:21 PM, Salve J Nilsen wrote: > I'd perhaps say that TIMTOWTDI has resulted in years of experimenting and > trying and failing and learning, leading to a CPAN and a Perl community that > is better and stronger than ever. John Siracusa makes some good points along these lines in Hypercritical (his weekly podcast with the pro-Ruby, Perl doubting, Dan Benjamin) Essentially all these other languages should learn from our mistakes - we've done the years of screwing up for them! If you're interested, the meat of the discussion happens way back in episodes 18. as part of a series where he responds to the pro-PHP comments made by the pro-PHP programmer Marco during his Build and Analyse podcast (also hosted with Dan on the same network.) http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/18 I really like the debates in these podcasts because they feature a Ruby, Perl and PHP guy actually sensibly stating their case and presenting good, coherent arguments and eventually finding middle ground. Mark.
Re: Writing About Perl
On 23 August 2011 13:02, Simon Cozens wrote: > On 23/08/2011 19:39, Dave Cross wrote: > > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 > word > > article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl had > moved > > on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you write about? > > What's changed in the past ten years? 10 years?... in no particular order.. Core Perl: -- Regular release cycles Setup stuff: - CPAN::Mini CPAN::Mini::Inject CPAN::Webserver local::lib cpanm perlbrew Best practices: -- Task::Kensho DBIx::Class Modern Perl (the book as well as the ethos) Moose / Moo MooseX::App::Cmd Testing / test results: --- http://www.cpantesters.org/ Test::Most Websites: -- https://metacpan.org/ http://perldoc.perl.org/ http://www.perl.org/about/whitepapers/ might also be useful to link to, although we should probably get some more sysadmin related papers in there (anyone interested let me know). Frameworks: --- Dancer Catalyst Plack with both of them + 160 Plack::Middleware modules to help Sysadmins not worry about server specific configuration. Web server infrastructure: - Starman (very fast) Mogilefs - distributed redundant file system These two work great for us at work (although there are more alternatives now): Perlbal - load balancer / proxy TheSchwartz - queue manager * * Sorry - I don't have time to write anything more than a cursory list, but there's at least a couple of articles in there, Leo
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 03:25:25PM +0100, Dave Cross wrote: > And most distros are far better at tracking newer versions of > interesting CPAN modules these days. So I can't really see it being a > problem. I'm not sure they do a good job of tracking *interesting* modules. They might track frameworks like Catalyst and important things like DBIx::Class and DateTime, but those aren't very interesting and don't do much without the interesting but unpopular bits n pieces that actually make your application unique. -- David Cantrell | Godless Liberal Elitist I'm in retox
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 12:59:42PM +0200, Job van Achterberg wrote: > On Tue, 2011-08-23 at 11:39 +0100, Dave Cross wrote: > > So, purely hypothetically... > > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a > > 3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of > > how Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What > > would you write about? > Developments in Moose, modern web frameworks, influences of Perl 6? None of those are of any interest to people not currently using perl. Web frameworks in particular is "so what, what's so special about that?" -- David Cantrell | Bourgeois reactionary pig Your call is important to me. To see if it's important to you I'm going to make you wait on hold for five minutes. All calls are recorded for blackmail and amusement purposes.
Re: Writing About Perl
Dave Cross said:
So, purely hypothetically...
If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a
3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of
how Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What
would you write about?
I'd perhaps say that TIMTOWTDI has resulted in years of experimenting
and trying and failing and learning, leading to a CPAN and a Perl
community that is better and stronger than ever.
Being the laughing stock (so to speak) of dynamic language communities
for many years have been a useful motivation for introspecting and
reinventing ourselves. It's like the the big and shy nerd in class
taking years of beating by the cool kids, and when the penny finally
drops, he quietly says "No, my friends, there's actually a lot of good
going on with me and I'm not going to take your abuse any more. Now go
fuck *yourself*, thankyouverymuch."
:-P
- Salve (Oslo.pm)
--
#!/usr/bin/perl
sub AUTOLOAD{$AUTOLOAD=~/.*::(\d+)/;seek(DATA,$1,0);print# Salve Joshua Nilsen
getc DATA}$"="'};&{'";@_=unpack("C*",unpack("u*",':4@,$'.#
'2!--"5-(50P%$PL,!0X354UC-PP%/0\`'."\n"));eval "&{'@_'}"; __END__ is near! :)
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:39:57AM +0100, Dave Cross typed: > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a > 3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of > how Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What > would you write about? Tell them to wait two years and then give them one about rakudo. -- Steve Mynott
Re: Writing About Perl
Sent from my iPhone On 23 Aug 2011, at 15:25, Dave Cross wrote: > Quoting Smylers : > >> Pete Smith writes: >> >>> using distro packages (cpan probably frustrates newbies to perl if >>> installation / tests fail) ... >> >> I'd say the opposite, that cpanm is one of the major highlights of >> recent developments in Perl. Somebody who's previously been frustrated >> by installing Cpan modules can be impressed by how cpanm just works -- >> and indeed by how easy it is to install cpanm in the first place. > > I agree with that. But I'm sure that at the level this hypothetical article > is aiming at, installing distro packages is going to be far better than any > solution involving CPAN. If only because mixing CPAN-installed modules and > distro-installed modules is potentially a recipe for disaster (and I'm _not_ > going to cover installing your own Perl). > > And most distros are far better at tracking newer versions of interesting > CPAN modules these days. So I can't really see it being a problem. > > Cheers, > > Dave... Larger orgs are rubbish at keeping up. So perlbrew, cpanm and local::lib are big wins in environment >
Re: Writing About Perl
Quoting Smylers : Pete Smith writes: using distro packages (cpan probably frustrates newbies to perl if installation / tests fail) ... I'd say the opposite, that cpanm is one of the major highlights of recent developments in Perl. Somebody who's previously been frustrated by installing Cpan modules can be impressed by how cpanm just works -- and indeed by how easy it is to install cpanm in the first place. I agree with that. But I'm sure that at the level this hypothetical article is aiming at, installing distro packages is going to be far better than any solution involving CPAN. If only because mixing CPAN-installed modules and distro-installed modules is potentially a recipe for disaster (and I'm _not_ going to cover installing your own Perl). And most distros are far better at tracking newer versions of interesting CPAN modules these days. So I can't really see it being a problem. Cheers, Dave...
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 13:59, Pete Smith wrote: > Hey, don't take it so literally. My point was that being easy to get up and > running is what made RoR so popular. As it did PHP before that...
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Dave Cross wrote: > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 > word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl had > moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? I'd sit down and re-read Modern Perl from cover to cover and take notes of things that are worth mentioning. You've also got a chance to throw in some one liners here: "Which I learned about at YAPC::Europe, one of Perl's annual conferences" "I'm using Perl 5.14 (a new stable version of Perl is released on average once a year)" Mark.
Re: Writing About Perl
> If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 > word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl had > moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you write > about? I was really impressed by the AutoCRUD but as someone's pointed out, you run the risk of saying "Look we can do what others have been able to do 10 years ago". Some sysadmin might suit that target audience. I have heard talk of perl on Android, that would be fun. Mobile apps are the rage and I'm not sure the readers of a popular Linux magazine are going to be interested in Moose+DBIC. Dp.
Re: Writing About Perl
On 23/08/11 12:45, Abigail wrote: So, the point of the assignment (which is to show how Perl has moved on in the last 10 years) is going to be "after 10 years, we now can do what Ruby on Rails can"? Hey, don't take it so literally. My point was that being easy to get up and running is what made RoR so popular.
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 2:02 PM, Simon Cozens wrote: > On 23/08/2011 19:39, Dave Cross wrote: > > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 > word > > article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl had > moved > > on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you write about? > > What's changed in the past ten years? I don't think this is going to be a > very > popular answer, but: not much. At least, not much that's user-facing. Sure, > there have been some minor adjustments to the language, but nothing so > exciting that it's worth sharing with people who aren't true believers > already. > > Ten years ago, design and implementation of Perl 6 had begun in earnest. > 'nuff > said. > > Ten years ago, CPAN was considerably smaller than it is today, but looking > back over my code from 10 years ago, at the time we *were* using CPAN > modules > for the majority of heavy-lifting in our applications. That hasn't changed. > > The Moose/Modern Perl/whatever doctrinaire style is new; 10 years ago, > TMTOWTDI still meant something. You could try rewriting an old piece of > code > in Moose and showing how different it is. > > Lightweight web frameworks are new, and are probably the only thing worth > screaming about to the world at large. > > In all honestly, I don't think there are, unfortunately, too many areas > where > Perl has been the driver of technological change over that time; we're > generally pretty good at providing interfaces to other interesting things > that > are going on, and maybe that is Perl's role and we should rejoice in it. It > doesn't make great marketing copy though. > > There. That should be enough for the simian terpsichory to begin, out of > which > might come some better suggestions. > CPAN still is a driver of techno-social change. Other repositories are maybe catching up - but CPAN is still on the frontier and it is the one that is being copied. Open Source has the chronic malaise of fragmentation, of disagreement, of debating all decisions and forking. The Perl community is not exception - and it is even worse in the lack of leader-library like Rails that would align the development. It also might seem that TIMTOWDI only leads to further fragmentation - but it also forces us to reject our assumptions and thus leads us to discover what is arbitrary and what is objective. One of these discoveries is the reliance on tests, -- Zbigniew Lukasiak http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/ http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/
Re: Writing About Perl
So there's three articles: 1. Mashups using CPAN modules 2. Modern perl, Moose, DBIC 3. Cool scaffold On 23 Aug 2011, at 13:27, Smylers wrote: > Pete Smith writes: > >> using distro packages (cpan probably frustrates newbies to perl if >> installation / tests fail) ... > > I'd say the opposite, that cpanm is one of the major highlights of > recent developments in Perl. Somebody who's previously been frustrated > by installing Cpan modules can be impressed by how cpanm just works -- > and indeed by how easy it is to install cpanm in the first place. > > And given that many modules (or versions of modules) become popular > faster than many users update their servers, suggesting people restrict > themselves to whatever modules come with their distribution may not be > helpful. > > For what it's worth, I have: > > PERL_CPANM_OPT='--sudo --prompt' > > I think --sudo is definitely worth mentioning when introducing somebody > to cpanm, since the casual user probably only has one Perl interpreter > installed and wants modules to be system-wide. > > Smylers > -- > http://twitter.com/Smylers2
Re: Writing About Perl
Pete Smith writes: > using distro packages (cpan probably frustrates newbies to perl if > installation / tests fail) ... I'd say the opposite, that cpanm is one of the major highlights of recent developments in Perl. Somebody who's previously been frustrated by installing Cpan modules can be impressed by how cpanm just works -- and indeed by how easy it is to install cpanm in the first place. And given that many modules (or versions of modules) become popular faster than many users update their servers, suggesting people restrict themselves to whatever modules come with their distribution may not be helpful. For what it's worth, I have: PERL_CPANM_OPT='--sudo --prompt' I think --sudo is definitely worth mentioning when introducing somebody to cpanm, since the casual user probably only has one Perl interpreter installed and wants modules to be system-wide. Smylers -- http://twitter.com/Smylers2
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Jason Clifford wrote: > On Tue, 2011-08-23 at 11:39 +0100, Dave Cross wrote: > > So, purely hypothetically... > > > > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a > > 3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of > > how Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What > > would you write about? > > 10 years ago the popular view was the perl always ended up with an > unmaintainable code base and that it was not very easy to implement. > > I'd suggest something to show how the use of CPAN makes it easy to > produce big projects without writing lots of code and that the code > produced is easy to maintain. I'd also consider doing something on top > of Plack and a popular web framework. > > As someone who used to mostly code Perl but mostly doesn't anymore (and re-joined this list to find out more about what the state-of-the-art in the world of the Camel was) this is the kind of thing I'd be interested in. I do read those kind of magazines, but no idea if I'd be the target audience for the article. Matt
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:39:57AM +0100, Dave Cross wrote: [...] > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 > word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl > had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you > write about? I would *not* bang on about Perl's web technologies. People interested in that are already going to be playing with the likes of Django or Rails which are perfectly good tools and Perl's tools aren't sufficiently better for most users that it's worth a switch. This being a Linux magazine, I'd focus more on system administration and tool-building, and odd ways to use Perl and Perl's tools to solve non-Perl problems. For example, there's the prename command that uses Perl one-liners to mangle filenames for renaming: I often use it to strip crap from and canonicalise filenames. TAP and prove is handy for testing non-Perl things - I use it to test some C++ stuff. POD is much less painful to write than raw nroff. ack is bloody handy. Look how much useful stuff Perl has done without having to write a line of code! Now you've piqued the readers' interest, you can save the code-writing for the second article in the series that they'll inevitably ask you to write...
Re: Writing About Perl
On 23/08/2011 19:39, Dave Cross wrote: > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 word > article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl had moved > on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you write about? What's changed in the past ten years? I don't think this is going to be a very popular answer, but: not much. At least, not much that's user-facing. Sure, there have been some minor adjustments to the language, but nothing so exciting that it's worth sharing with people who aren't true believers already. Ten years ago, design and implementation of Perl 6 had begun in earnest. 'nuff said. Ten years ago, CPAN was considerably smaller than it is today, but looking back over my code from 10 years ago, at the time we *were* using CPAN modules for the majority of heavy-lifting in our applications. That hasn't changed. The Moose/Modern Perl/whatever doctrinaire style is new; 10 years ago, TMTOWTDI still meant something. You could try rewriting an old piece of code in Moose and showing how different it is. Lightweight web frameworks are new, and are probably the only thing worth screaming about to the world at large. In all honestly, I don't think there are, unfortunately, too many areas where Perl has been the driver of technological change over that time; we're generally pretty good at providing interfaces to other interesting things that are going on, and maybe that is Perl's role and we should rejoice in it. It doesn't make great marketing copy though. There. That should be enough for the simian terpsichory to begin, out of which might come some better suggestions.
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, 2011-08-23 at 11:39 +0100, Dave Cross wrote: > So, purely hypothetically... > > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a > 3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of > how Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What > would you write about? 10 years ago the popular view was the perl always ended up with an unmaintainable code base and that it was not very easy to implement. I'd suggest something to show how the use of CPAN makes it easy to produce big projects without writing lots of code and that the code produced is easy to maintain. I'd also consider doing something on top of Plack and a popular web framework.
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 12:24:05PM +0100, Pete Smith top-posted: > I think that devs are interested in tools that let them get things up > and running with little effort, so perhaps an article explaining how > easy it is to use catalyst/dancer/mojo + dbic + plack (with a bit of > moose thrown in) using distro packages (cpan probably frustrates newbies > to perl if installation / tests fail) to get a web app up and running in > a few minutes. > > That was the appeal of ruby and rails as far as I can make out. So, the point of the assignment (which is to show how Perl has moved on in the last 10 years) is going to be "after 10 years, we now can do what Ruby on Rails can"? > > On 23/08/11 11:39, Dave Cross wrote: >> >> So, purely hypothetically... >> >> If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a >> 3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how >> Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would >> you write about? >> Abigail
Re: Writing About Perl
> I agree. Show how to write a web service running on Dotcloud using Dancer . Making use of modules from CPAN, which make it even easier to get stuff done? Sawyer created a small presentation after a "joke" site I created, to showcase that exact thing: http://www.slideshare.net/xSawyer/your-first-website-in-under-a-minute-with-dancer Take a module (in my case, Text::UpsideDown), create a web interface to it in minutes. I am not sure this is what the wide audience of a Linux journal would like to read about how Perl has changed in the past decade, though.. --- Marco Fontani Glasgow Perl Mongers - http://glasgow.pm.org/ Bitcoin: 1QA1K3Ghz9AuJ8na6JKJVudEko3WKx1xC2 Join the RackSpace Cloud at: http://www.rackspacecloud.com/277.html
Re: Writing About Perl
On 23 August 2011 12:24, Pete Smith wrote: > I think that devs are interested in tools that let them get things up and > running with little effort, so perhaps an article explaining how easy it is > to use catalyst/dancer/mojo + dbic + plack (with a bit of moose thrown in) > using distro packages (cpan probably frustrates newbies to perl if > installation / tests fail) to get a web app up and running in a few minutes. > > That was the appeal of ruby and rails as far as I can make out. > > I agree. Show how to write a web service running on Dotcloud using Dancer . Regards, Peter
Re: Writing About Perl
I think that devs are interested in tools that let them get things up and running with little effort, so perhaps an article explaining how easy it is to use catalyst/dancer/mojo + dbic + plack (with a bit of moose thrown in) using distro packages (cpan probably frustrates newbies to perl if installation / tests fail) to get a web app up and running in a few minutes. That was the appeal of ruby and rails as far as I can make out. Cheers, Pete On 23/08/11 11:39, Dave Cross wrote: So, purely hypothetically... If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you write about? Cheers, Dave...
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:57:49AM +0100, Peter Sergeant wrote: > On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Dave Cross wrote: > > > So, purely hypothetically... > > > > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 > > word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl had > > moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you write > > about? > > > > > Perl's strength is as a glue language - gluing together the wealth available > on CPAN. > > So I'd like to see an article that built a service that did quite a bunch of > complicated things by gluing together CPAN modules... I rather write about gluing together "services". Services (like databases, email, http, etc) the readers are familiar with. Otherwise, it sounds to much as "here we have a bunch of toys made out of play-doo; look how awesome this play-doo is, we can use more play-doo to glue them all together". Abigail
Re: Writing About Perl
Developments in Moose, modern web frameworks, influences of Perl 6? On Tue, 2011-08-23 at 11:39 +0100, Dave Cross wrote: > So, purely hypothetically... > > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a > 3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of > how Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What > would you write about? > > Cheers, > > Dave... >
Re: Writing About Perl
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Dave Cross wrote: > > So, purely hypothetically... > > If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a 3000 > word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of how Perl had > moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What would you write > about? > > Perl's strength is as a glue language - gluing together the wealth available on CPAN. So I'd like to see an article that built a service that did quite a bunch of complicated things by gluing together CPAN modules... -P
