use Perl

• Planet, Plagger, Perl (Score:1)

  by ChrisDolan (2855) on 2008.06.13 23:08 (#63390) Homepage Journal

  As a Perl developer, a Planet contributor, and a (novice) Plagger user, I feel somewhat qualified to compare the software behind that and Plagger. Planet is MUCH MUCH easier to use than Plagger. Internally, Planet has an radically different development style. Planet has no official releases -- it's all just the bzr trees. The Venus branch (for which Sam Ruby deserves a ton of credit!) of the Planet project was the first to add any real tests. But it changed some of the founding principals of aggregation (e.g. sort by discovery date, not original date).
  
  That brief comparison aside, I don't understand why Perl people insist on Perl tools. I think that's an NIH attitude that is frequently unproductive. Unless you plan to do heavy hacking, you should use the easiest tool that accomplishes the job.
  
  Finally, you contrast the "openness" of your feed vs. Planet Perl. In both cases, one should use email to request the addition of new feeds. I've sent emails to the Planet Perl maintainers and have found them to be responsive. How is Planet Perl any less open in that regard?
  
  Competition is a fine thing, but I think that you did diss Planet Perl in your comparison, whether intentional or not. Indubitably, your implementation is prettier (but I reaggregate anyway so I'll never see that prettiness).
  

  Reply to This

  • Re: (Score:1)

    by davegaramond (3597)

    I think you're being too serious. I believe the choosing of Plagger of has more to do with image/marketing/advocacy (showing Perl-based tools) than technical reasons. As another example, I usually use Wordpress when creating blogs, as it's the easiest to install. But I might choose MT when creating a Perl-topic blog, just because it's written in Perl and showcase Perl applications.
    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ajt (2546)

      While there is nothing wrong with using the right tool for the right job, which sometimes isn't your favourite tool, in this case a blog aggregator is something Perl should be good at and hence the Perl community in this case should eat it's own dog food an use a Perl aggregator...

      --
      -- "It's not magic, it's work..."
  • Re: (Score:2)

    by miyagawa (1653)

    > Planet is MUCH MUCH easier to use than Plagger
    
    Of course! Because Planet is designed to do one thing while Plagger is not.
    
    If you want the easienss of using Planet in Perl, Dave Cross' Perlanet [perl.org] is another option.