use Perl

• What I do (Score:1)

  by Limbic Region (3985) on 2008.12.04 9:04 (#66200) Homepage Journal

  I try to perpetuate the culture and enrich the community that attracted me to Perl a little over 6 years ago and hasn't let go.

  I spend time working on other people's problems for no other reason than to help

  I have written a CPAN module

  I have written dozens of patches and emailed other authors about improvements to their code

  I have written an article published on perl.com

  I have answered thousands of questions on PerlMonks and an unknown number on IRC

  I have written a half a dozen tutorials on PerlMonks

  I have a Perl related blog

  I hang out on places where new comers go such as PerlMonks and IRC and help them along - often times pointing them to resources

  I attend conferences

  I talk about Perl to anyone who will listen - online or in meatspace

  I am honest when I talk about Perl and I think that is important. It isn't all roses and I don't pretend otherwise.

  In addition to enriching and perpetuating the community, I also support the developement and advances of the language to keep it relavent

  I have contributed a patch to perl 5 (albeit a short doc fix)

  I have filed bug reports

  I fill out surveys when people ask for input on improving things

  I have contributed code to both Parrot and Pugs

  I have asked questions on the Perl 6 mailing list

  I have built and tested Parrot on platforms such as Win32/Cygwin and Win32/MinGW which seem to be step children but are important to someone

  I have publicly and privately provided funding to developers to work on the future of perl

  I am not sure what else I would have time to be doing. If you, or anyone else, has an idea of what I could better spend my time on to help I am all ears. I could certainly write articles for perl.com but it would come at the cost of not spending time on PerlMonks or on IRC - I am tapped out of time so changing WHAT I do with that time is the only offer I can make.

  Reply to This

  • Re: (Score:1)

    by chromatic (983)

    I am not sure what else I would have time to be doing.

    A beginner's book might be nice, but I believe no one has the right to criticize you for how you spend your time. Certainly, you have no reason to feel guilty for not doing enough. Thank you.
    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ovid (2709)

      A beginner's book for Perl? I didn't think there would be a market outside of "Learning Perl". Aren't there a ton of them? (Though most of them are astonishingly bad).
      • Re: (Score:1)

        by chromatic (983)

        Learning Perl assumes you already know how to program. Where's Elements of Programming with Perl for Perl 5.10? Where's Head First Perl?