use Perl

So, Andy and I have just launched Perl Buzz, a shiny happy web2.0y Perl blog. It's a bit of an experiment in public relations/marketing, and I'll be very interested to see how it goes.

Here's a description of what Perl Buzz includes, from the launch announcement:

• The main Perl Buzz blog, which you're reading right now, is all about news, reviews, and what's exciting in the Perl world. We're interested in everything from impressive Perl websites (see our review of iusethis.com) to releases of free and commercial Perl software (like Movable Type 4.0, released last week) to interesting uses of Perl you might not know about (like attributes or how to write a LOLCODE parser using Parse::RecDescent).

• Over in Project Hum, we track what's going on in Perl projects. Anything from performance tweaks to calls for help to translations of docs into other languages. We watch other Perl news sources to find out what's going on, but please let us know if you'd like us to post something about your project!

• CPAN Watch is all about what's noteworthy on CPAN. Watching the full feed of CPAN uploads can be like drinking from the firehose, so we filter it and just post the most interesting releases, along with why you should care.

Check it out and, if you're that way inclined, digg it.

If you are claiming your use.perl.org journal with Technorati, post the claim code in your profile, not in a post. Technorati just wants it to be somewhere on the page, and putting it in your profile means that it won't spam everyone.

Thanks to Aristotle for the tip.

Schwern’s been talking about Perl blogs and their visibility.

There are hundreds(?) of journals over on use.perl, but if you google for Perl blogs you won’t find any of them easily. In fact, you won’t find much of anything at all. Meanwhile, googling for Ruby blogs will give you an entirely different picture.

It’s things like this that lead people to claim that Perl is dead, when the converse is manifestly true. Thing is, a lot of the conversations about Perl are happening in walled — or at least lightly fenced — gardens that are not very visible to the rest of the web.

So, let’s fix that.

Schwern discovered that Technorati — one of the biggest and best-known blog search engines — doesn’t index use.perl journals by default. If you want it to know about yours, you have to register.

1. Sign up for an account on Technorati
2. “Claim blog”, and give them your use.perl journal URL, eg. http://use.perl.org/~skud/journal
3. Post the provided link in your use.perl journal
4. Click the button back on Technorati to let them know you’ve done it.

You’ll now see that your journal exists in Technorati, and will start being indexed.

Read more...

I've started a list of Perl blogs over on the Perl 5 wiki. If you've got one, please add yourself.

(Are use.perl.org journals blogs for this purpose? I dunno. Make your own call.)

Pet topic du jour... the suckiness of installing Perl web apps, as compared to apps written in certain other languages starting with P.

Last night I posted this blog post about CPAN and installability. I've also been making some generalised notes on the subject.

Any thoughts/comments/suggestions/etc would be welcome, if you've got 'em.

My current workplace uses the following question as part of its recruitment process for Perl developers:

Q. How would you rate your Perl skill on a scale of 1 to 10?

When I first interviewed here, I told them I was a 7 on a worldwide scale including people like Larry Wall, but a 10 with regard to commercial Perl programmers in Australia. Having had a lot of exposure to the international Perl world, travelling to conferences and user groups, meeting some of the really big names and so forth, I think I've got a fairly reasonable view of my own skill level. Meanwhile, a surprising number of our applicants seem to rate themselves as an 8 (+- 1) with no further explanation or qualification.

Leaving aside how pointless a single integer rating is as a measure of expertise (and believe me, that conversation's happening elsewhere), I find myself wondering: what is a 10?

Here's what I came up with: "Has regularly contributed code to the Perl interpreter; has contributed at least 5 major CPAN modules with high CPAN ratings/CPANTS score/depended on by other major modules; has written well-regarded books and/or articles on Perl; has spoken at international conferences on Perl; has received grants from The Perl Foundation; can obtain personal reference from Larry Wall."

(Obviously Larry himself is 11 on this scale.)

On IRC, TonyC pointed out that most of the things I listed are irrelevant to my boss (for generic values of "my boss", I guess, since I don't think Tony's met him.) He's got a point. Most organisations looking to hire Perl people -- especially here in Australia -- aren't looking for Larry or Damian or MJD or a pumpking. They're just looking for competent commercial software developers.

Thing is, the more-or-less-average Perl people out there will be applying for these jobs ranking themselves as 8s against the pool of competent commercial software developers they've met in their previous jobs, while the enthusiastic, dedicated ones who've been exposed to the broader range and deeper depths of Perl through involvement in and contributions to the Perl community, and picked up skill and knowledge through it, will *also* be rating themselves as 8s -- or lower -- against a broader scale.

I'm not sure I have a point here, other than that getting people to assess their Perl skill on a range of 1-10 isn't going to get you any useful answers.

I emailed Paul Johnson a week or so back and offered to help him clarify the docs on Devel::Cover, because $DEITY knows they confuse me enough, and I've been using DC for years.

So the plan is to generally edit/improve what's there, including Devel::Cover::Tutorial (did you know that existed?) and to add a Devel::Cover::Cookbook giving examples of common uses of DC. It'll cover things like "running DC from make test" and "excluding unwanted files" and so forth.

So my question to you, gentle readers, is do you have any questions you'd like answered or tips you'd like to share in the docs? If so I'll try and cover them.