Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 2:26 AM, Chas. Owens wrote: > On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 21:39, Xue, Brian wrote: >> I want to adding one more answer about what are people waiting for before >> they >> start using Perl 6. >> >> There hasn't an official release of PERL6.0, just Rakudo. I'm afraid of >> Rakudo is cancelled, I don't want to make my product based on an uncertainty >> matter. > snip > > This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what Perl 6 is. I don't know if Brian had the misunderstanding or if he wanted to point out that such misunderstandings exist out there but this is not the point either. I think there are lots of people (ok, among the few who have any thought about Perl 6) that sound like the above sentence. I think it might be useful to try to find this out and later - maybe 6 months or a year from now - see if the numbers change. Gabor
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 1:36 PM, Moritz Lenz wrote: > On 01/01/2011 10:15 AM, Gabor Szabo wrote: >> So for example: >> >> I'll start learning Perl 6 (select one or more that fits your opinion) >> *) when Larry Wall declares that Perl 6.0 is ready >> *) after Rakudo 1.0 is released > > Given the current version number scheme (year.month), it's highly > unlikely that we'll ever see a Rakudo 1.0. > > So I'd change that to "after a production release of a Perl 6 compiler" I think I'll include both answers. If we learn that people desperately need a 1.0 numbering then the Rakudo developers can make up their mind to either change the numbering scheme or invest more in education of the users. Maybe pointing out that after releasing 2011.01 you can't release 1.0. :) Gabor ps. In Padre I try to stick to the "increase by 0.01 and not jump to 1.00". It is surprising how many people tell us "I'll use Padre once 1.0 is released". I can't even imagine how many people think the same but don't tell us.
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 6:27 PM, Patrick R. Michaud wrote: > On Sat, Jan 01, 2011 at 12:53:17PM +0100, Daniel Carrera wrote: >> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Moritz Lenz wrote: >> >> > Given the current version number scheme (year.month), it's highly >> > unlikely that we'll ever see a Rakudo 1.0. >> > >> > So I'd change that to "after a production release of a Perl 6 compiler" >> >> People might be expecting that when Rakudo is ready it would have a >> 1.0 release. I sure did. Using year + month is nice in a way, but it >> means that you don't immediately know if the release is production vs >> devel, or whether it's a major vs minor release. > > Out of curiosity (because I think it will illuminate some of the difficulty > Rakudo devs have in declaring something to be a "production release"): > > - What constitues a "production release"? > - What was the first production release of Perl 4? > - What was the first production release of Perl 5? > - What was the first production release of Linux? > - At what point was each of the above declared a "production release"; > was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards? I think it largely depends on who do you ask and I believe there will be a huge gap between private people and company people. Or between people who are involved in open source development and in-house developers. I guess most people won't even be able to answer those questions. While I am sure everyone has clear definitions and objective measurements in the end most of us just have a feeling of "ok, this is good enough". (We just don't talk about it publicly.) Some kind of an official blessing is needed by most of us. This can be Larry for Perl or Patrick for Rakudo or having it "supplied by our vendor" (e.g. Ubuntu, Red Hat or ActiveState). I think this is much less needed by the people on this list and involved more or less in Perl 6 and needed a lot more by people external to the process. Or did you mean "declared by the developers themselves"? Gabor
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 22:30 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: > >> Thanks. Found that already. It does not list the questions asked and I > >> can't figure out how to download the PDF report or to clone the > >> repository it's in on github. Jan Involdstadt suggested I look at TPF website and following the link to the 2009 survey, I figured out how to get the git url (they've changed the interface since I was last there). git clone git://github.com/singingfish/Data-PerlSurvey-2010.git and less Data-PerlSurvey-2010/data/all_data.csv perldoc Data-PerlSurvey-2010/lib/Data/PerlSurvey/2010.pm gives you most of what you need. -- --gh
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
(a mistakenly private exchange back to the list) On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 10:11 PM, Gabor Szabo wrote: > On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 10:08 PM, Guy Hulbert wrote: >> On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 21:51 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: >>> On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Guy Hulbert wrote: >>> > >>> > I'm not sure what 'TPF survey' is. >>> >>> http://survey.perlfoundation.org/ >>> >>> Gabor >> >> Thanks. Found that already. It does not list the questions asked and I >> can't figure out how to download the PDF report or to clone the >> repository it's in on github. >> >> I probably responeded to the survey but I won't remember without seeing >> the questions. > > the same here, I am trying to reconstruct the questions based on the results. > I also asked the help of Kieren Diment who ran the earlier survey. > > Gabor >
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 6:05 PM, Guy Hulbert wrote: > I think freezing a subset of what you eventually want to have and then > getting as close as you can on a fairly tight schedule is the best way > to get buy-in from users. That is generally what I expect to see in a production release, yes. I don't think it's a rule, but I expect to see a feature freeze, and a period where you just look for bugs for the existing feature set, and then comes the production release. Daniel. -- No trees were destroyed in the generation of this email. However, a large number of electrons were severely inconvenienced.
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 5:27 PM, Patrick R. Michaud wrote: > Out of curiosity (because I think it will illuminate some of the difficulty > Rakudo devs have in declaring something to be a "production release"): > > - What constitues a "production release"? The developers judge that the software is reasonably feature complete, and more importantly, it is robust enough to use in a "production" environment such as a school or company website, where customers will experience it. It does not mean that it is perfect, or fast. But the programmer should have a reasonable expectation that it will work correctly (aka as documented). > - What was the first production release of Perl 4? I never saw Perl 4, but I suspect 4.0. > - What was the first production release of Perl 5? I suspect 5.0. > - What was the first production release of Linux? I suspect 1.0 > - At what point was each of the above declared a "production release"; > was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards? IMO, concurrent. Daniel. -- No trees were destroyed in the generation of this email. However, a large number of electrons were severely inconvenienced.
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Guy Hulbert wrote: > > I'm not sure what 'TPF survey' is. http://survey.perlfoundation.org/ Gabor
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 20:10 +0100, Jan Ingvoldstad wrote: > It does not, however, answer any of the question_s_ I wanted asked, and > which others have wanted asked, not even partially. I haven't seen any such requests from you on this thread. Is this discussion happening elsewhere as well ? > [snip] > But with careful phrasing - something I've been sloppy with in this thread, > I'm sorry to say - then you can (probably) get the information you want. It seems to me "the information you want" is up to Gabor, who started this thread. I'm looking back at his posts: http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.users/2010/12/msg1366.html == I am preparing a survey of the Perl Ecosystem which will take the TPF survey and extend it. == I'm not sure what 'TPF survey' is. Gabor has a URL: http://perl-ecosystem.org/ in his original post, which was omitted from his follow-ups. There are 3 more ideas here: http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.users/2010/12/msg1369.html The question of an official release arose here: http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.users/2011/01/msg1388.html Apart from the 'TPF survey'. The main thrust seems to be: a) How to get people to use perl6. b) How to get people to help develop it. Seems to be a chicken and egg problem. I am about to start on (a) and if I get anywhere, I will try to work on (b). So (a) seems to be more important. I'm going to shut-up and look at the 'ecosystem' link now and perhaps see if I can figure out what 'TPF survey' means. BTW, one other thing that interested me is that padre supports perl6 and can be got running on windows fairly easily now. My IDE is 'emacs' but that does not help much with perl on windows ... so padre might be a boost to perl6 adoption, if we believe that an important target for perl6 is perl5 developers. Yes, I know that Gabor is responsible for padre so tia. -- --gh
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 19:02, Guy Hulbert wrote: > Many people seem to be proposing questions which ask people's opinions > of things which are factual and can be answered readily by reading the > documentation. > > For example, your question can be partly answered by looking at the > rakudo download page. There were about 3000 downloads of the July > release (I was one) and since then there have been less than 1000 (not > me) per month. > That tells us that there is a lower download rate, to be sure, and that might indicate a lower rate uptake. It does not, however, answer any of the question_s_ I wanted asked, and which others have wanted asked, not even partially. There is a difference between simplified statistical aggregates and getting responses from human beings, which are then analyzed. The way in which you ask a question can, of course, also introduce a bias in how the response appears. If you ask: "Do you think Perl 6 will ever be production ready?" you may have introduced a negative bias in the question. But with careful phrasing - something I've been sloppy with in this thread, I'm sorry to say - then you can (probably) get the information you want. -- Jan
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 18:45 +0100, Jan Ingvoldstad wrote: > You guys stopped discussing the questionnaire a LONG time before PM > answered. There has hardly been a handful of helpful posts. That's what I said and that was my first post. > > > Getting back on topic, I, for one, would like to know how many people > have heard about Perl 6, and to what extent. I would like to know > whether they use it or not, and to what extent (already covered in > some of the suggestions), and I would like to know whether people like > what they see or not, and to which extent. Many people seem to be proposing questions which ask people's opinions of things which are factual and can be answered readily by reading the documentation. For example, your question can be partly answered by looking at the rakudo download page. There were about 3000 downloads of the July release (I was one) and since then there have been less than 1000 (not me) per month. Personally, I have decided to finally make a commitment to writing a perl6 app. This is not entirely due to the state of rakudo. The biggest influence on my decision was the posting of the example of a class which implements a rolled dice. I've been interested in parrot and perl6 ever since they were announced but I don't have a lot of time or expertise to contribute. So I subscribed to this mailing list when I was finally convinced that perl6 was going to really happen. -- --gh
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, Jan 02, 2011 at 06:25:18PM +0100, Jan Ingvoldstad wrote: > On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 18:05, Guy Hulbert wrote: > > On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 10:27 -0600, Patrick R. Michaud wrote: > > - What was the first production release of Linux? > > - At what point was each of the above declared a "production > > release"; > > was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards? > > Linus declared what his goals for 1.0 were and started a 0.9x series. > > > and so on. > > While this meta discussion is all very nice, I don't really see what it has to > do with the questionnaire. > > Gabor didn't ask us to discuss the answers to the questions, he asked us to > come up with more questions that we would like to see answered. In order to put together a worthwhile survey, I think some "meta-discussions" about the questons/answers we're likely to encounter are important. I also think the existence of a survey itself is likely to re-open a variety of otherwise dormant Perl 6 discussions and threads (as it already has), so we should be cognizant of that potential impact. Still, if others feel that the "production release" meta-discussion is too far off-topic for consideration in the questionnaire, I'll let it drop here and perhaps reintroduce it under another thread. Pm
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 18:33, Guy Hulbert wrote: > On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 18:25 +0100, Jan Ingvoldstad wrote: > > At least have the decency to change the e-mail subject when the > > discussion's > > subject has changed! > > IMO, the subject changed at the second post. I was just responding to P > Michaud who is the current principal developer of the s/w being > discussed. > > You guys stopped discussing the questionnaire a LONG time before PM answered. There has hardly been a handful of helpful posts. Getting back on topic, I, for one, would like to know how many people have heard about Perl 6, and to what extent. I would like to know whether they use it or not, and to what extent (already covered in some of the suggestions), and I would like to know whether people like what they see or not, and to which extent. -- Jan
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 18:25 +0100, Jan Ingvoldstad wrote: > At least have the decency to change the e-mail subject when the > discussion's > subject has changed! IMO, the subject changed at the second post. I was just responding to P Michaud who is the current principal developer of the s/w being discussed. -- --gh
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 18:05, Guy Hulbert wrote: > On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 10:27 -0600, Patrick R. Michaud wrote: > > - What was the first production release of Linux? > > - At what point was each of the above declared a "production > > release"; > > was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards? > > Linus declared what his goals for 1.0 were and started a 0.9x series. > … and so on. While this meta discussion is all very nice, I don't really see what it has to do with the questionnaire. Gabor didn't ask us to discuss the answers to the questions, he asked us to come up with more questions that we would like to see answered. At least have the decency to change the e-mail subject when the discussion's subject has changed! -- Jan
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 10:27 -0600, Patrick R. Michaud wrote: > - What was the first production release of Linux? > - At what point was each of the above declared a "production > release"; > was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards? Linus declared what his goals for 1.0 were and started a 0.9x series. I think the transition was something like 0.12 -> 0.95 but when I started using linux it was about 0.99c or so. I started in December and the 1.0 was some time the following summer. I think the 0.95 (or whatever) was about August/September. Debian's first public release was something like 0.94rc6 but their version numbers now look like: 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 5.1 ... I think freezing a subset of what you eventually want to have and then getting as close as you can on a fairly tight schedule is the best way to get buy-in from users. Debian has a pretty good way to do this. Except for release-critical bugs, I think they eventually just push all the rest into the next release aobut a week before they publish the final product. I know that this description is imprecise but you can see it what they really do in their bug graphs. -- --gh
Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
On Sat, Jan 01, 2011 at 12:53:17PM +0100, Daniel Carrera wrote: > On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Moritz Lenz wrote: > > > Given the current version number scheme (year.month), it's highly > > unlikely that we'll ever see a Rakudo 1.0. > > > > So I'd change that to "after a production release of a Perl 6 compiler" > > People might be expecting that when Rakudo is ready it would have a > 1.0 release. I sure did. Using year + month is nice in a way, but it > means that you don't immediately know if the release is production vs > devel, or whether it's a major vs minor release. Out of curiosity (because I think it will illuminate some of the difficulty Rakudo devs have in declaring something to be a "production release"): - What constitues a "production release"? - What was the first production release of Perl 4? - What was the first production release of Perl 5? - What was the first production release of Linux? - At what point was each of the above declared a "production release"; was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards? Pm
