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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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The fallacy of assuming constant demand 3 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • I would add that Open Source is not about Adam Smith economics and group demand. I think it is about scratching an itch and it might happen that others might find it useful.

    Some see a need for using TAP::Parser in Test::Harness and bought maintainers seem to be in agreement, if others don't like it there is always the source and a fork.
    • I would argue that toolchain development is not about scratch and itch either.

      It's about brick walls.

      Tools are there to make "real" work more productive.

      So when it comes to improving or extending tools, the question is one of whether or not it's going to be more expensive in mental effort and human time to extend the current tools, or to just do the job directly.

      If tools are easy to extend, people will extend the tools, because that is going to be quicker compared to just doing the job directly. If they start to try to extend tools and hit some brick walls, or tricky coding, then it exceeds the maximum time available to write the tool in and they do the job directly.

      This is also the beauty of the ::Tiny modules and other similar things in the "utility" areas. They aren't JUST small in size.

      Equally important is that they are one single .pm file that works back to Perl 5.004 and doesn't need a compiler or even really an installer. They are completely malleable and highly approachable, and so they are usable even for small ancillary tasks, not just ones where that job is the main focus.

      I've been using Config::Tiny a lot myself, but not YAML::Tiny is mostly working I keep looking at all my config code and thinking "You know, it would be SO EASY to just move those to YAML, and it would make life easier downstream".

      • Ha! I have been converting some of our Config::General files to YAML::Tiny this week. Part of the re-tooling effort for the project I am on. : )
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