Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Robin Houston wrote: On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 03:38:06PM +, Lucy McWilliam wrote: I'm tempted to do a lightning talk (good practise for my viva) but I don't actually do anything astonishing Perl-wise, it's just the biology/methods that are quite fun. Oh yeah, do it! I know a lot about Perl but very little about biology, and I'd love to hear about it. Hmmmokay. thinks of something to put in proposal L. Sex, flies and microarrays.
Re: bad nasty evil thread
Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 11:32:45PM +, Piers Cawley wrote: Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And I spent Monday setting up a Linux fileswerver which is now going to be abandoned. Why? Because the person running it decided that something that didn't say Microsoft on it was too scary, and he was safe with Windows. People who have real experience don't make decisions like that; it's the idiots we have to worry about. Please, these people are *not* idiots. Anyone who chooses a fileserver which won't work reliably over one that will - when the one that will has already been paid for, and the one that won't will cost the company about L2,000 extra - simply because the unreliable one has a pretty login screen _is_ an idiot. I'm sorry; there's no way round that. With the best will in the world Roger. YOU ARE MISSING THE FUCKING POINT. -- Piers It is a truth universally acknowledged that a language in possession of a rich syntax must be in need of a rewrite. -- Jane Austen?
Re: bad nasty evil thread
Piers Cawley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Um... no he hasn't. Linux isn't just the cost of the software you know, it's the cost of the knowledge required to use it effectively. After all, MSCEs are commodity parts in any organization. Linux administrators are not. That is a *big* difference right there. And we're back round the advocacy loop again. How do we get commodity certified Linux people out there? And I'm not talking about any great in-depth knowledge either, but good enough to use webmin or some other evilness to get Samba, Mail and printing set up on a Windows LAN. -- Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star http://www.deep-purple.com Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Fri, Jan 25, 2002 at 09:07:03AM +, Dave Hodgkinson wrote: And we're back round the advocacy loop again. How do we get commodity certified Linux people out there? And I'm not talking about any great in-depth knowledge either, but good enough to use webmin or some other evilness to get Samba, Mail and printing set up on a Windows LAN. Have a big evil organisation that hands out the only recognised certifications. Whether this is a good thing is left as an exercise for the advocates. -- He's an old-fashioned flyboy vagrant on the run. She's a tortured kleptomaniac barmaid with an incredible destiny. They fight crime!
Re: bad nasty evil thread
And we're back round the advocacy loop again. How do we get commodity certified Linux people out there? And I'm not talking about any great Perhaps a more important question is - do we really want Linux and UNIX admins to be commodity items? Think rates...
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Fri, Jan 25, 2002 at 10:25:21AM +, Redvers Davies wrote: And we're back round the advocacy loop again. How do we get commodity certified Linux people out there? And I'm not talking about any great Perhaps a more important question is - do we really want Linux and UNIX admins to be commodity items? Think rates... There are already lots of people who think they're UNIX admins from having installed RedHat once. The damage to rates has already been done. One possible good effect of a certification programme - but only if standards are kept high - would be to decrease the numbers. I've known quite a few MCSEs. There doesn't appear to be any correlation between MCSE status and actual skill, except for the people who got them when it was still new and difficult. Roger -- He's a lounge-singing crooked sorceror with a mysterious suitcase handcuffed to his arm. She's a mentally unstable green-skinned museum curator living homeless in New York's sewers. They fight crime!
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 01:17:33PM -0500, Mike Jarvis wrote: How does that beat mod_perl at anything? How do people get away with charging so much for it? Can we convince people that a perl based app server is a sexy? Can we sucker them out of hundreds of thousands of pounds in licenses/consulting? Maybe this is the new direction for london.pm - setting up a company run by whoever happens to be in the CFT club at the moment, buying suits and PDAs and marketing perl application servers at the Java market... We could call Perl 6 Perl Plus and employ more Mongers as they become CFT-enabled due to their employers spending vast amounts of money on our conslutancy fees... Alex -- KCBpd lWmulvo ECS+ m5 CPEIV B13 Ou Lmb Sc+isIC+ T++ A6LAT H6oe b5 D+ - See http://bob.bob.bofh.org/~giolla/bobcode.html for decoding Website: http://www.cpio.org/~grimoire Writing: http://www.livejournal.com/~diffrentcolours
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Fri, 25 Jan 2002, Roger Burton West wrote: On Fri, Jan 25, 2002 at 10:25:21AM +, Redvers Davies wrote: And we're back round the advocacy loop again. How do we get commodity certified Linux people out there? And I'm not talking about any great Perhaps a more important question is - do we really want Linux and UNIX admins to be commodity items? Think rates... There are already lots of people who think they're UNIX admins from having installed RedHat once. The damage to rates has already been done. One possible good effect of a certification programme - but only if standards are kept high - would be to decrease the numbers. I've known quite a few MCSEs. There doesn't appear to be any correlation between MCSE status and actual skill, except for the people who got them when it was still new and difficult. A better analogy would probably be Cisco's CCNE programme. Now that is *hard* and the people who pass it earn $lots. So much so that Cisco had to implement a lower level of certification as the cost of getting CCNE was just too high. So now you have CCNA which is not very difficult to get (about equivakent to MCSE) and and designer certification which is not quite as hard as the CCNE. doom mode=on Unfortunately *all* the certifications are backed by vendors with vested interests. I know of no independent certifications that carry any weight at all. Perl cannot compete with that (we don't have the resources) and so I suspect we will never have a perl certification programme that is effective. /doom Simon. -- I demand to have some booze
Re: bad nasty evil thread
Chris Devers wrote: That or one of the surreal new hyperoperators So perl^=~ ? ;) Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Fri, 25 Jan 2002, Newton, Philip wrote: Chris Devers wrote: That or one of the surreal new hyperoperators So perl^=~ ? ;) So... ...that would be pronounced... ...perl smokes crack? ...? ;) -- Chris Devers People with machines that think, will in times of crisis, make up stuff and attribute it to me - Nikla-nostra-debo
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 03:06:51AM -0600, Richard Clyne wrote: Because some things work better on NT than on Unix. As long as decisions are made based on the suitability of the platform for the application, then I've got nothing against NT etc. Yep. We're running MimeSweeper on NT, forwarding to a Sun box as a pop3 server after filtering... if anyone can direct me to a better *nix only system that's as easy to configure with as good support that won't be troublesome to install and migrate to, I'd be interested but our own research hasn't found anything. Alex -- KCBpd lWmulvo ECS+ m5 CPEIV B13 Ou Lmb Sc+isIC+ T++ A6LAT H6oe b5 D+ - See http://bob.bob.bofh.org/~giolla/bobcode.html for decoding Website: http://www.cpio.org/~grimoire Writing: http://www.livejournal.com/~diffrentcolours
Re: bad nasty evil thread
* robin szemeti ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Friday 25 January 2002 11:12, Alex Page wrote: We could call Perl 6 Perl Plus and employ more Mongers as they become CFT-enabled due to their employers spending vast amounts of money on our conslutancy fees... wow .. thats a good idea ... Although I still think it is theoretically a sound business idea, however implementation is likely to fail due to the stone soup / critical mass reasons. Greg -- Greg McCarroll http://217.34.97.146/~gem/
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 09:12:41PM +0100, Merijn Broeren ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Quoting Dave Cross ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): Perl has a huge image problem. It's seen as the language that script kiddies use to write insecure CGI scripts. And it's difficult to argue with that perception because that's pretty much what the majority of Perl code is. I know it doesn't seem that way to us because we see a vibrant and exciting community will loads of interesting things going on. The rest of the world doesn't see that. Naah, Perl is used all over the place for much more interesting stuff then web programming. I'm always happy if people stop CGI scripting in Perl and use a decent solution, be it websphere or mod_perl. Look at the interview about archive.org, take a look behind the scenes at major corps, Perl is used everywhere. Its the same discussion that was spun here a while ago, high level is the key, and Perl+CPAN unlocks a great potential. I'm much more concerned if DBI works for Perl6 then anything else. (Ok, kerberos, ldap, net:: etc. as well). I really think you're wrong about that Merijn. Sure, MSDW are doing really cool things with Perl, and we can all name other companies that we've worked for where interesting Perl work is going on. But I really don't think it's everywhere. Look at the computer press. Do you see anyone talking about Perl there? The vast majority of companies don't use Perl at all. And until we do something about advocacy for Perl 6, that situation won't change. Dave... -- Don't dream it... be it
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 08:17:10PM +, Greg McCarroll wrote: so for humour sake, what would we call it? P# or PP (You said pee-pee, snicker :-) A
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 12:33:44AM +, Rob Partington wrote: The main problem I have with Ruby for easynet[1] is that most of the things I do need web frontends and I really need Template Toolkit for that. Hopefully someone[2] will take pity on me and port it to Ruby RSN. Hi Rob, I'll be your [2]! It's on my TODO list. You'll be pleased to know it comes above rewrite Emacs (and get it right this time), implement Xanadu and prove the Goldback Conjecture but below rewrite TT v3 (in Perl) and doing all the real work that I get paid for. I was trying to engineer the circumstances that would allow me to devote large chunks of real, working, paid-for time to further developing TT, porting it to Ruby and other things. Alas, I'm now more busy than ever with other work so it's on ice for the next few months at least. However, I do have the benefit of working with some world class Perl hackers on some very interesting stuff: http://openframe.fotango.com :-) A
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Piers Cawley wrote: Please, these people are *not* idiots. And if we persist in calling them that and treating them as if they *are* idiots then we are going to continue to be perceived as scary people that no sane person should go near. So you're trying to tell us that you're not a scary person that no sane person should go near, piers ? the hatter
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Chris Carline wrote: In fact, perl 6 may be a far more attractive proposition as a CLR language due to its fresh implementation. If successful (and I wouldn't underestimate the chances of Microsoft here), it would mean that programmer productivity would actually start to mean something again. And I already know which language *I'm* most productive in. At one level I agree and look forward to the day when I can easily work in a language I feel most comfortable with. At another level it scares me to death. In anything less than the largest software houses, a standard language will be chosen and used because it will reduce the maintenance costs. There is nothing more likely to derail a project than coming across code that needs to be changed for which you don't have the available skills. As now, certain shops will specialise in certain languages, some will florish and others will die. In many respects building web-sites for human consumption is going the same way. Java is winning because management believe it is cheaper. Of course they are wrong but how do you convince them of it ? Where are the case studies ? Unless perl is accepted as a language of choice by *management* it will not be pre-eminent in this space. It will always find a place in the JFDI toolbag but it will not be the number one choice at a senior level. Simon. -- ENOSIG
RE: bad nasty evil thread
Because some things work better on NT than on Unix. As long as decisions are made based on the suitability of the platform for the application, then I've got nothing against NT etc. Richard. NT and Unix SysAdmin -Original Message- From: Roger Burton West [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 23 January 2002 20:12 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: bad nasty evil thread On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 08:11:38PM +, Greg McCarroll wrote: So why do NT servers (or their win 2000 equivalents) exist at all? Because purchasing decisions are made by people who don't have to work with the systems; Because those people still think that, by dealing with a single established company, they have some recourse if things go wrong; Because those people want a pretty box, and a shiny certificate; Because those people have been trained to listen to salesmen rather than to techies; Because those people persist in judging the value of a thing by its cost. Roger -- He's an oversexed dishevelled cat burglar haunted by an iconic dead American confidante. She's a plucky winged widow on her way to prison for a murder she didn't commit. They fight crime!
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 09:04:15PM +, Chris Carline wrote: The key here is that Microsoft are trying to create a language-independent platform; whereas the alternative (Java) ties you to the one approach. That's not strictly true. Microsoft are try to create a language independant *Microsoft* platform; whereas the alterantive (Java) doesn't tie you to one operating system. MS want you to be able to use N different languages on your Microsoft box, but they most certainly *don't* want you to be able to run Visual Basic or C# on a Linux box, for example. C# and .NET is just another marketing smoke screen, just like COM et al before it. You can safely ignore both these technologies. Microsoft are going down, anyway. :-) If, on the other hand, Parrot fulfills its potential then it will truly be a cross-platform, cross-language solution. Much better. A
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Piers Cawley wrote: Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: that; it's the idiots we have to worry about. Please, these people are *not* idiots. And if we persist in calling No, it will be the clever people that chose perl 6. Alex Gough
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Struan Donald wrote: * at 23/01 17:44 + Mark Fowler said: This name has to go. Perl 6 makes it sound like it's just another update to perl. It's not. It's a new beginning. won't that just confuse people? alternately it's the sort of thing people see through pretty easliy too. i foo? what's that? oh, i see, it's just perl with a different name you have to convince them that perl 6 is a good thing because it is a good thing rather than with a flashy name. plus i think there is possibly enough good feeling etc out there that it's worth hanging on to the name. Before people get despondent, I met someone in a club in Oxford who told me perl was good though bad, and asked me if perl 6 would make it better. Given that otherwise unconnected people are hearing about what's happening, faffing with a name would spoil the effect entirely. Alex Gough
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 12:08:45AM +, the hatter wrote: will point to perl6, and perl5 will have to be called as perl5. And I pick redhat merely because it's a hugely popular distrib, and they do tend to want to get the new/cool/geeky options in there quickly, so the other distribs will copy, I would hesitate to say other distributions copy as though Red Hat is some standard bearer of quality or innovation necessarily... And not that Oracle is particularly any of those things either but let's face it, they dropped support for Red Hat in their latest release. Hmm, wonder why./rhetoric Paul
Re: bad nasty evil thread
* at 23/01 19:25 + Mark Fowler said: On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Struan Donald wrote: * at 23/01 17:44 + Mark Fowler said: This name has to go. Perl 6 makes it sound like it's just another update to perl. It's not. It's a new beginning. won't that just confuse people? alternately it's the sort of thing people see through pretty easliy too. i I'm not suggesting that we hide the fact that it's Perl. More the fact that we brand it in such a way that it's clear it's not perl. You see the difference? I agree there is a branding issue here but i'm just not sure that changing the name is the way to go. it's more about changing the perception of perl than anything. now i have no idea how to go about doing that but i feel that a name change won't make that much difference in the long term unless we make people realise that it's not the same perl. The biggest opposition that perl 6 faces is for mind share. You're thinking with your programming hat on. This is the issue: maybe i am thinking with my programming hat on but in some ways i think this is where we have to start. if we want to persuade people outwith the perl community to think of perl in a different way we have to start to persuade the community to project perl in a different way. i think it's fair to say that the perl community is perl's biggest asset but in some ways it's also perl's biggest drawback as we're not very good at thinking outside the community. we all assume that perl's benefits are so obvious that once people look they will magically be converted and it's not true. (and i know i'm over generalising here but as a whole community it seems like a trueism) foo? what's that? oh, i see, it's just perl with a different name This does not differ from 'Perl 6. It's just Perl with another digit.' Some people will always think like that. But using a digit will not convince them otherwise fair point. you have to convince them that perl 6 is a good thing because it is a good thing rather than with a flashy name. Yes! But I don't see the point in not making a big deal out of how much it's changed. I think you're seriously ignoring the mind share issue. again, fair point. but why can't we make a big deal out of how much it's changed between perl 5 and perl 6? perl has mindshare. surely we should be trying to increase that and alter the perception of it rather that starting from scratch? plus i think there is possibly enough good feeling etc out there that it's worth hanging on to the name. This may be true. Maybe you want a sub-brand. Java has this with J2EE. Now I'm not saying that we reopen the whole P5EE debate again, but *never* underestimate the power of branding. shit no. take nike as the prime example of this. perl does need better branding. however that can start now. we all agree that perl 5 rocks and will be about for a while. if we start trying to make people realise that then when perl 6 arrives and rocks harder it'll be all the easier to persuade them to take it on. i guess that's my point. why wait for perl 6 to kickstart perl? if perl has an image problem then why not start trying to fix that now? the longer we wait the steeper the slope we have to climb is. s
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Piers Cawley wrote: Please, these people are *not* idiots. And if we persist in calling them that and treating them as if they *are* idiots then we are going to continue to be perceived as scary people that no sane person should go near. I'm *proud* to be a scary person that no sane person should go near. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote: The vast majority of companies don't use Perl at all. And until we do something about advocacy for Perl 6, that situation won't change. Meanwhile, Perl is earning a good name for itself in the scientific community. Then again, this might just be saying summat about scientists ;-) L. I believe in justice, I believe in vengeance... I believe in killing the bastards.
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Paul Makepeace wrote: On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 12:08:45AM +, the hatter wrote: will point to perl6, and perl5 will have to be called as perl5. And I pick redhat merely because it's a hugely popular distrib, and they do tend to want to get the new/cool/geeky options in there quickly, so the other distribs will copy, I would hesitate to say other distributions copy as though Red Hat is some standard bearer of quality or innovation necessarily... Oh I didn't mean that in any way to sound like RH is wonderous, grand, nice, or even desirable (what with slackware 8 safely on that tape in my bag) but I suspect that every other distrib that wants to be taken seriously would like to have an install base as large as RH. And regardless of oracles stance, I still see more pre-compiled commercial apps say they run on RH (or 'linux' but they mean RH) than all the others put together. And if it's in RH and getting used, then the other distribs really don't want to leave it out, unless they want to exclude part of their target audience. the hatter
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 11:26:11AM +, Dave Cross wrote: But I really don't think it's everywhere. Look at the computer press. Do you see anyone talking about Perl there? Look at the computer press. Do you see anyone talking about stuff they haven't been paid to talk about there? Even in my peripheral position (freelance articles) I was aware of pressure to say good things about specific companies' products. Roger -- He's an underprivileged hunchbacked Green Beret who knows the secret of the alien invasion. She's a brilliant gold-digging fairy princess with an evil twin sister. They fight crime!
Re: bad nasty evil thread
* Lucy McWilliam ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote: The vast majority of companies don't use Perl at all. And until we do something about advocacy for Perl 6, that situation won't change. Meanwhile, Perl is earning a good name for itself in the scientific community. Then again, this might just be saying summat about scientists ;-) And remember this years YAPC::Europe is Perl and Science -- Greg McCarroll http://217.34.97.146/~gem/
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote:
I really think you're wrong about that Merijn. Sure, MSDW are doing really
cool things with Perl, and we can all name other companies that we've worked
for where interesting Perl work is going on. But I really don't think it's
everywhere. Look at the computer press. Do you see anyone talking about Perl
there?
Just out of interest, where can I get press announcements for perl? You
know the kind of thing...
Foo said on the releasing of perl X.XX.XX. I think we can all agree that
perl X.XX.XX-1 was a tremendous success that has generated lots of interest
both in the technical arena and up in the boardroom. People are really
keen to see what can be done with this new technology.
With the latest release of perl X.XX.XX we've really concentrated in
delivering the people all the new top features that they've been asking
for. A lot work has gone into this release and we're confident that this
new update will have strong take up in the community when they realise how
empowering the new facilities in this release are.
Foo further joked, I'm sure that most companies will want to update their
software to take advantage of the new power that comes with perl X.XX.XX -
before their competitors do
If I'm a lazy journalist (tm) then I can make an entire story out of that.
Later.
Mark.
--
s'' Mark Fowler London.pm Bath.pm
http://www.twoshortplanks.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
';use Term'Cap;$t=Tgetent Term'Cap{};print$t-Tputs(cl);for$w(split/ +/
){for(0..30){$|=print$t-Tgoto(cm,$_,$y). $w;select$k,$k,$k,.03}$y+=2}
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Lucy McWilliam ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Meanwhile, Perl is earning a good name for itself in the scientific community. Then again, this might just be saying summat about scientists ;-) And remember this years YAPC::Europe is Perl and Science I'm tempted to do a lightning talk (good practise for my viva) but I don't actually do anything astonishing Perl-wise, it's just the biology/methods that are quite fun. L.
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Chris Devers wrote: On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Simon Wilcox wrote: On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Chris Carline wrote: In anything less than the largest software houses, a standard language will be chosen and used because it will reduce the maintenance costs. I'm not sure if this is universally true or not. It's not of course ! What I should probably have said is that in most corporates, where they're doing development, they will only have a small team. They will tend to standardise on one language as it cheaper to recruit for and presents a standard code base. In very large dev teams and bespoke software houses, then there is a good possibility of dedicated teams such as those you mention. On the flip side, as a buyer of software systems a corporate has to weigh up home much it will cost them to maintain their software assets. I suspect that many will opt to standardise. From my own experience I know that I have been asked to build websites using NT/asp/M$SQL because that's what we've got the skills to support even though it was far more costly for them in development and purchase of additional software. Then again, I've also been asked specifically to use perl because of exactly the same reason and that's my point. Unless we can get perl to be the language of choice then people are more likely to standardise on something else. Java is winning because management believe it is cheaper. Of course they are wrong but how do you convince them of it? Where are the case studies? http://perl.oreilly.com/news/success_stories.html ? Oh yes. Not updated since August last year. Hardly a ringing endorsement unfortunately. Although the case studies are quite good. Simon. -- I demand to have some booze
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote: I worry that if we take the first option then Perl will be dead in five years. I worry that you keep saying that. Why? What is your concern, exactly? I think the worst case scenario is that Perl could end up being like Cobol is today -- old, ugly, and unloved, but a lot of working systems depend on it years after they were written, so the need to maintain it (and to have developers that understand it) will remain into the forseeable future, until such time that these systems can be reimplemented in something newer (which may not be worth the effort in the first place). If that counts as a dead language, then okay I agree with you -- it is a danger (though in my mind not a huge one). But that doesn't sound *that* bad to me. It's not like Perl is going to disappear completely, is it? I don't think so. I think Perl's blessing curse is that it got so tightly bound to the web and thus the dotcom hype, and now that dotcom has gone dotbomb, Perl may be getting dragged down with it. Maybe. But Perl was useful before the web came along, and it will of course remain useful if the web were to go away. The problem is the perception that Perl is bound to the web, which clearly isn't true, and needs to be changed. -- Chris Devers People with machines that think, will in times of crisis, make up stuff and attribute it to me - Nikla-nostra-debo
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 03:32:11PM +, Mark Fowler wrote: I buy Heinz tomatoe ketchup because I know it and it's low risk - the ketchup is *good* *enough* and I've only got one bottle of ketchup. I don't want to be stuck at home with some (possible nice, but unknown) ketchup to discover that it tastes terrible and have nothing to put on my chips. ...but this guy's _already bought and paid for_ the unknown ketchup; and rather than taste it, he throws it away and buys Heinz. Not quite the same decision. Roger
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 03:38:06PM +, Lucy McWilliam wrote: I'm tempted to do a lightning talk (good practise for my viva) but I don't actually do anything astonishing Perl-wise, it's just the biology/methods that are quite fun. Oh yeah, do it! I know a lot about Perl but very little about biology, and I'd love to hear about it. .robin.
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 09:41:03AM -0600, Chris Devers ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote: I worry that if we take the first option then Perl will be dead in five years. I worry that you keep saying that. Why? What is your concern, exactly? I think the worst case scenario is that Perl could end up being like Cobol is today -- old, ugly, and unloved, but a lot of working systems depend on it years after they were written, so the need to maintain it (and to have developers that understand it) will remain into the forseeable future, until such time that these systems can be reimplemented in something newer (which may not be worth the effort in the first place). Yeah. That's exactly the scenario that I'm talking about. Perl as a latter-day COBOL. If that counts as a dead language, then okay I agree with you -- it is a danger (though in my mind not a huge one). But that doesn't sound *that* bad to me. It's not like Perl is going to disappear completely, is it? I don't think so. Ok, so not disappearing altogether, but if I want to continue using Pelr I don't want my only option to be maintaining old software. In my book that's dead to all intents and purposes. I think Perl's blessing curse is that it got so tightly bound to the web and thus the dotcom hype, and now that dotcom has gone dotbomb, Perl may be getting dragged down with it. Maybe. But Perl was useful before the web came along, and it will of course remain useful if the web were to go away. The problem is the perception that Perl is bound to the web, which clearly isn't true, and needs to be changed. Oh, I agree with that. But not only is Perl perceived as being that web language, it's perceived as being that out of date web language. I think that Perl (and even more so - Perl 6) could be the enterprise level language of choice for so many different areas, but we've got a lot of work to do to persuade the mainstream that it isn't just badly-written, unmaintainable CGI scripts. Simply saying in a years time hey look we've got a cool new version of Perl isn't going to do it. Personally I blame Matt Wright. Dave... -- Drugs are just bad m'kay
Re: Advocacy thoughts - was Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 04:00:41PM +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: Neither of you can predict the future. I don't know the specifics of this case, but Win2K (or even NT3SP3) is hardly an unreliable file serving platform*. In my experience they both are (assuming you meant NT4SP3). And Penderel is hardly a testament to the reliability of Linux machines. I don't know who set up Penderel. I do know that no Linux machine I've set up has had downtime from anything other than hardware failure. It's my job to get these things right, and I do. I can't go into much more detail of this particular case, for obvious reasons; suffice it to say that technical issues were not a factor. Roger -- He's a suicidal guerilla barbarian whom everyone believes is mad. She's a virginal hypochondriac mercenary with an MBA from Harvard. They fight crime!
Re: Advocacy thoughts - was Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 04:00:41PM +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: Anyone who chooses a fileserver which won't work reliably over one that will - Neither of you can predict the future. I don't know the specifics of this case, but Win2K (or even NT3SP3) is hardly an unreliable file serving platform*. And Penderel is hardly a testament to the reliability of Linux machines. Penderel is a testament to the unreliability of x86 machines. It is my experience, however, that on any particluar x86 box, Linux is more stable than Billware. With Linux you only have to worry about the shitty hardware. With Billware, you need to worry both about that and about the shitty OS. /handwave I doubt the pretty login screen counts for much, although possibly some. Seriously, what do you suppose this manager's reasons were for making his/her decision? Was it a simple case that he sees Microsoft as a predictable if unspectacular option versus Linux as a high risk option? If he sees it as a high-risk option, then he is at best ignorant. Does he just think you recommended Linux only because you can't be bothered to learn how to administer NT properly? If he thinks Roger is unprofessional then he should say so, and should fire him. That he didn't shows that he is an idiot if that is his reason for choosing NT. Does he have a friend who had real trouble setting Samba up for some reason and now he's wary of it? If he values the advice of a random friend over the advice of the person he pays good money to to know about these things, then he's an idiot. Was it that the decision over this file server was entirely trivial as far as he was concerned, and he just couldn't care less what gets used? If that is the case, then he's an idiot. Occasionally you do get incompetant people. But usually, people have good reasons for making decisions, even when they make the wrong decision. This seems to boil down to a pointy-hair not paying attention to the people who he pays to know about these things. Not paying attention to your hired experts whilst continuing to pay for the service of those hired experts is idiocy. Until you understand why people decide to choose technically inferior products, it's hard to make your technically superior product more popular with them. Agreed. But I see no non-technical reasons above which would justify choosing something which is technically inferior. I've met a lot of resistance to Perl based on 'bad past experiences'. We all know these were usually caused by bad programmers and stupid timescales. But your bad experience counts for a lot more than someone else's good experience, which is why the 'Perl success stories' are not alway so convincing. That's OK then. Soon *everyone* will have been burnt by Java and come flocking back :-) [stuff about negative campaigning being bad] all true. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david One person can change the world, but most of the time they shouldn't -- Marge Simpson
Re: Advocacy thoughts - was Re: bad nasty evil thread
David Cantrell wrote: Does he have a friend who had real trouble setting Samba up for some reason and now he's wary of it? If he values the advice of a random friend over the advice of the person he pays good money to to know about these things, then he's an idiot. No, actually I disagree, and it's an important point. I didn't say it was a random friend. My friends are less random than my employees. I employ people based on the best of a bunch of C.V.s that I manage to get within a short time period, minus those ruled out by salary restrictions, minus those that don't want the position in the end, and filtered according to one or maybe two hour long interviews and if I'm lucky some examples of past work. My friends on the other hand may be people I've worked with closely for years, selected out of all the many people I've ever worked with. Or people whose opinions I've read on mailing lists for years. Like many of us I tend to change jobs every 1-2 years, so I'd never know my employees longer than that, while I've known some of my technically minded friends for 5 years or more. true I have two employees who work for me. They are both good(ish) Java programmers but have limited knowledge of other areas of computing. One of them tells me he wants to use some commercial bug tracking tool that he used in his last job. It's expensive and proprietary (PVCS tracker) but he really wants it. My friends tell me they've got by fine with cheap and chearful bits of web based freeware, or maybe bugzilla when things get hairy. I overule him and tell him we'll use some PHP based thing I installed in my lunch break (called Mantis, it's on sourceforge somewhere). Why should I do this? He's the developer who has to use it, right? I should just give him what he recommends, after all he says it's good and I've never even used it. Well, my job as manager is not to do whatever my programmers say. I have to think about budget, I have awareness of our future staffing requirements, which make the license fee look a lot worse down the line. In fact, I had a political aim too - I recognised this employee was rather over fond of commercial software, and I wanted to show him that sometimes free stuff can do the job - and it's much better to show than to tell. Plus, it wouldn't kill him to learn a bit of PHP, if nothing else so he can compare it to Java. Plus, if I'm wrong, it's not really a big deal to fix down the line, it's a good chance for me to try something out. In fact, I was also quite interested to see how he would react to being overuled by me. The point is, I did not evaluate this based purely on What is the best (value for money) bug tracker around. I had lots of other things on the agenda. And I had a lot of faith in friends who assured me that for my size projects you really don't need super duper feature rich wizzo bug tracking tools. /true Business people place a huge amount of store in the opinions of their friends and contacts. Unless they have a good relationship with their employees, they may place considerably less store in their opinions. If you want your boss to listen to you, be nice to him. Yes, that's politics, but it's a feature of human nature so we have to deal with it. I've met a lot of resistance to Perl based on 'bad past experiences'. We all know these were usually caused by bad programmers and stupid timescales. But your bad experience counts for a lot more than someone else's good experience, which is why the 'Perl success stories' are not alway so convincing. That's OK then. Soon *everyone* will have been burnt by Java and come flocking back :-) Actually I think that's true. Already Java is becoming the new VB. Want a job in computing? Can't do anything? Read a book on Java and tell them you are a programmer. As the quantity Matt Wright style Java and JSP increases (and I've seen plenty already) it will lose much of its appeal. I think Java will soon become what C is now. Neither good nor bad, still widely used, but somehow a bit old and tired, OK for some big old J2EE project left over from 2002 but not really the best thing to be doing a new project in. One person can change the world, but most of the time they shouldn't -- Marge Simpson Everyone has better sigs than me. -- Jonathan Peterson Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, +44 (0)20 7383 6092 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Advocacy thoughts - was Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 04:00:41PM +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: serving platform*. And Penderel is hardly a testament to the reliability of Linux machines. I think Penderel is suffering from a bad case of old-shabby-hardwaritis. Paul
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, David Cantrell wrote: On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Piers Cawley wrote: Please, these people are *not* idiots. And if we persist in calling them that and treating them as if they *are* idiots then we are going to continue to be perceived as scary people that no sane person should go near. I'm *proud* to be a scary person that no sane person should go near. Er, whassat make us then ? /J\
Re: bad nasty evil thread
On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Mark Fowler wrote: On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote: I really think you're wrong about that Merijn. Sure, MSDW are doing really cool things with Perl, and we can all name other companies that we've worked for where interesting Perl work is going on. But I really don't think it's everywhere. Look at the computer press. Do you see anyone talking about Perl there? Just out of interest, where can I get press announcements for perl? You know the kind of thing... Foo said on the releasing of perl X.XX.XX. I think we can all agree that perl X.XX.XX-1 was a tremendous success that has generated lots of interest both in the technical arena and up in the boardroom. People are really keen to see what can be done with this new technology. snip If I'm a lazy journalist (tm) then I can make an entire story out of that. I think that you got the job baby :) /J\
Re: bad nasty evil thread
Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 07:02:50PM +, Andy Wardley wrote: Because, as Roger put it, they have highly-paid liars telling the decision-making credulous fools how wonderful it is. And I spent Monday setting up a Linux fileswerver which is now going to be abandoned. Why? Because the person running it decided that something that didn't say Microsoft on it was too scary, and he was safe with Windows. People who have real experience don't make decisions like that; it's the idiots we have to worry about. Please, these people are *not* idiots. And if we persist in calling them that and treating them as if they *are* idiots then we are going to continue to be perceived as scary people that no sane person should go near. -- Piers It is a truth universally acknowledged that a language in possession of a rich syntax must be in need of a rewrite. -- Jane Austen?
RE: bad nasty evil thread
On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Scottow Adrian - adscot wrote: What is rather more likely to happen is people start to use Perl 6 and find out how cool it is and use this for new development instead of Perl 5. Leading to a two perl platform situation. Hmmm I wonder how many people out there still have to write and support Perl 4 stuff. I'd tend to agree with that side of things, and a lot of the perl in use doesn't do anythinng complicated that will get really messed up by perl 6. The way I see it is that 6 will start shipping with redhat, and the simple stuff will need minimal effort to convert, and soon enough /usr/bin/perl will point to perl6, and perl5 will have to be called as perl5. And I pick redhat merely because it's a hugely popular distrib, and they do tend to want to get the new/cool/geeky options in there quickly, so the other distribs will copy, the home users will install and that will also drive the ISP market to support it for their clients (though I do admit virtually zero knowledge of perls use in non-netcentric environments, I have a real difficulty understanding the mindset required for producing huge tracts of code that will run for 40 years, won't get any new hardware, and is designed to be expanded internally, rather than through interfacing to other processes[1]) Of course, any complex code currently in development or enhancement will have an amount of pressure to move it to perl 6 to take advantage of the 'real programming' features that it does better, and to help a little with futureproofing. That said, I was talking to someone the other day who was working on something that only runs on perl4, but I've not had that conversation prior to that for several years. the hatter [1] Actually, this is something I've been wondering a little about london.pm-ers, there have been a fair number of posts from people asking things that I would consider beginner-level internet-related stuff while showing that they understand programming a lot better. Are there many people on here who use perl for systems that don't end up on the far end of an HTTP request, or talking to a system that ends up talking to such an app ? I'd say that the vast majority of sysadmins and internet-related developers I know all use perl, so assumed that the converse was true. Is there a secret world that I haven't seen, obscured by the fact that it doesn't come with the skills to self-promote itself as much on the net by default ?
Re: bad nasty evil thread
In message Pine.SOL.3.96.1020123114333.1875K-10@tsunami, Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Struan Donald wrote: Regardless of what you might think of Java, C#, Ruby et al they are fairly new and hence in some people's eyes[1] better not to mention more buzzword friendly. Aren't Perl Java pretty much the same age? Isn't C# just Java in different clothing? And Ruby, well, there's a bit of hype in the Perl community (usually coming across as similar to parental pride at an offspring that is growing up into a fine, upstanding adult), but is anyone actually using Ruby for anything serious at this point? Define serious. Ruby currently stands, in an intermediary role, between the fine people that use UKOnline and bad things on the internet. It's also being infiltrated into other areas of the easynet[1] systems (but don't tell them, they fear change.) Seriously, though, the Ruby script replaced some C code and is a lot easier to maintain (even with my shonky coding), it's a lot more flexible, and the performance doesn't suck that much in comparison. The main problem I have with Ruby for easynet[1] is that most of the things I do need web frontends and I really need Template Toolkit for that. Hopefully someone[2] will take pity on me and port it to Ruby RSN. Then I'll start replacing the evil PHP and Perl we have lying around with Ruby. *cackle* [1] branding guidelines, bold and with a lower-case 'e' [2] I started, got bored, gave up. -- rob partington % [EMAIL PROTECTED] % http://lynx.browser.org/
Re: bad nasty evil thread
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Because purchasing decisions are made by people who don't have to work with the systems; Not always the case, though. At easynet, the final monetary say might be in the hands of the higher Gods, but purchasing decisions are made very much on the shop floor. If you can justify it business-wise, you can have it. Because those people still think that, by dealing with a single established company, they have some recourse if things go wrong; It depends which company you're talking about, I suppose, but that's one of the reasons people buy the Suns and Compaqs of the world, to have that kind of It's 3am, it's all gone to arse, panic backup. Because those people persist in judging the value of a thing by its cost. In these times, unfortunately, that can be the life or death of a company. -- rob partington % [EMAIL PROTECTED] % http://lynx.browser.org/
