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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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So bad at promotion that we don't know what we don't know 8 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • We throw around words like "Modern" and "Enlightened" and "Directory of Marketing" because they are the best we can do, because we don't know how to name things well.

    IMHO, "we" throw around these terms because they have positive connotations with no denotations -- i.e. they are standard marketing claptrap. If you have a specific idea for how you want Perl to change, you christen it "Good Perl" or something, then repeat that term endlessly. One of these days, after I decide what I want Perl to become, I'll

    • [They] are standard marketing claptrap.

      I don't speak for any "we" but the editorial we, but I like the term "Modern Perl" because I like pointing to well-written code which takes advantage of the CPAN and community idioms and features added to Perl in the past decade to solve problems elegantly and maintainably and having a concise, memorable term to use to distinguish it from bad code poorly thrown together with no sense of design, little understanding of Perl's strengths and weaknesses, and no intent for long-term maintainability.

      I find that that distinction between the two codebases exists and is much easier to discuss if it has a name. (The pattern movement has known this for most of Perl 5's lifespan.) I don't particularly care what other people use as a name, whether Enlightened or Modern or Maintainable or Good or whatever. I just want it to have a name.

      • Ignoring the marketing claptrap comments, my only criticism of "Englightened" and "Modern" are that as an adjective they aren't self-evident.

        Modern Bride Magazine? OK, I can see what that might be, even though I'm not a bride.

        Modern Perl? Without knowing Perl already, it's not something that says much.

        • Without knowing Perl already, it's not something that says much.

          I'm not sure any adjective would be self-evident to people unfamiliar with Perl. I suppose we could characterize them by Perl 5 release version number, but that has obvious flaws. We could use "circa 1999" or "circa 2004" to describe the code, but that's clunky.

          "Modern" and "enlightened" and "Renaissance" all connote visible differences between eras. That's an interesting convergence around a narrative metaphor: effective and elegant Perl

      • I don't particularly care what other people use as a name, whether Enlightened or Modern or Maintainable or Good or whatever.

        Try "chromatic's," or "strict and warnings and Moose," or (I guess) "rakudo." My point, which seems to have sadly been lost, is that "meaningless-positive-adjective Perl" is standard marketing bullshit, and implicitly assumes that your audience is a pack of semi-morons. It's no better than "Enterprise Perl Bean Solutions." Please don't do that.

        • I don't see it as "meaningless-positive-adjective" perl, so much as "memorable-succinct-suggestive-adjective" perl.

          A "name" has to serve a lot of purposes.  If it is too long and unmemorable (strict and warnings and Moose Perl) it is not a name but a description.  The name does *not* have to be the description, it just has to be suggestive enough that, once someone learns the description the name will an easy to remember tag that quickly reminds them of the description.  It also is a bug adva

          • The name does *not* have to be the description, it just has to be suggestive enough that, once someone learns the description the name will an easy to remember tag that quickly reminds them of the description.

            Agreed. But to retain some credibility, the name should be both descriptive and value-neutral. "Extreme Programming" and "Waterfall Programming" both succeed because they describe the relevant processes without claiming that they are either good or bad. "Perl" and "Linux" do as well, to some extent

      • > I don't speak for any "we" but the editorial

        He means the words (plural), not the people

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