use Perl

I vote No, for most of the same reasons already posted by chromatic.

I like Test::NoWarnings. Its author, Fergal Daly, is one of the sharpest people in the Perl QA world. But Test::Warnings is not part of the Perl core distribution. So to earn this proposed Kwalitee metric, I would have to include Test::NoWarnings underneath the t/ directory in each one of my CPAN distributions. That's pointless.

To the latter first: Torvalds opens his talk by saying that for the purpose of his talk, anyone who defends CVS or CVS-based version control systems such as Subversion is "ugly and stupid." At this point one would assume that he is speaking tongue-in-cheek. But he repeats this characterization a number of times in the 70-minute talk and further characterizes the authors of Subversion as "morons." This leads me to believe that he is not simply having a little fun but does in fact hold the authors and users of these VCSes in contempt. In his characterization of the human beings writing or using these VCSes I find no trace of generosity -- only scorn.

Torvalds' hostile tone toward the people involved with other VCSes ultimately undermines the case he makes for git, IMO. I'm certainly open to an argument that what he characterizes as 'distributed' source code management is better than a 'centralized' system. But I would want to hear that argument from someone who is not heavily invested in dissing the people who disagree with him.

If there are any readers of this post who were present in the Google audience for Torvalds' talk, I would welcome comment as to whether my impression as a viewer of the video matches yours.

1. Sunday, May 14 (Mothers Day): 3 Mexican guys, dressed as mariachis, get on the Manhattan-bound Brighton line Q-train at Prospect Park, Brooklyn. After the doors close, they begin to sing and play instruments. The stretch until the next station at 7th Avenue is relatively long, so it's not uncommon for buskers to try to score some cash from a captive audience between those two stations. After a moment, the lead singer stops singing and, his sombrero extended in his right hand, begins to make his pitch for donations. He speaks exclusively in Spanish, content in the knowledge that, notwithstanding the fact that the neighborhoods through which the Brighton line passes are not particularly Hispanic, in 2007 enough people in a New York City subway car will understand what he's saying to enable him to earn his living without having to switch to English.
2. First 230 years of U.S. history: Direction of flows in people and funds between Ireland and New York City was as follows:
   • People: From: Ireland; To:New York.
   • Funds: From: New York; To:Ireland.

   Winter 2007: Big ad campaign appears in New York City subways encouraging riders to apply for high-tech jobs in Ireland. (One member of Perl Seminar NY has already been hired to work for Google in Dublin.) New York Times reports that, with continuing decline of dollar versus euro, many Irish are buying condo apartments in Manhattan because in exchange-rate adjusted terms, they're cheaper than apartments in Dublin -- and you can rent them out for more than you could get in Dublin, as well.

Last month I spoke at a local (non-Perl) users group. They needed a last-minute substitution for a speaker who couldn't make it, so I gave what was more or less the talk on maintenance of CPAN modules I gave at YAPC in June. There was a guy in the first row who was evidently out to bait me. His first question was, "I hear Perl is dead."

I cited the strength of this year's YAPC, the vitality of the Perl community, etc. Since I felt he was simply trolling, my response was brief so I could get on to a more on-topic question.

This week, fresh off the plane from the Chicago Perl hackathon the popping of my Parrot/Perl 6 cherry, I was coming out of the subway on my way to work when I ran into a fellow I've known for several years. He used to attend Perl Seminar NY fairly regularly. He spoke two or three times, always did good presentations and always impressed me with the breadth of his professional experience, with respect to languages, OSes and areas of focus.

So he says (I'm paraphrasing from memory), "At my shop (a medium-sized investment bank) the amount of Perl that people are writing is really going down. People are writing a lot of JRuby and JPython because the Java libraries have gotten so much better and Perl 6 hasn't come out."

I didn't want to get into an argument there, but I urged him to come back to perlsemny some time and share his experiences working in non-Perl environments. That night I formalized that a bit by inviting him to speak at perlsemny, but in my email I also noted the big upsurge in postings on jobs.perl.org and that the fact that Perl, at long last, had enable me to get an IT job.

I work at a Perl shop, so the amount of Perl being written there is in no danger of declining. But a lot of my colleagues, who are all Perl programmers but only a few of whom participate in the Perl community, are clearly skeptical that Perl 6 will be worth the wait for it. Since I have to agree that the wait has been, shall we say, protracted, I don't have much to say in response. (I guess my own response has been to finally find a niche of the Perl 6/Parrot project I can work on -- but that's not everybody's approach.)

I'm wondering how the rest of you cope with potentially FUD-dish attitudes toward Perl.

About two years ago this time I helped organize a Perl Seminar NY contingent of the Phalanx project. When I pitched the project to our members, I emphasized the joys of collective hacking. And it proved very enjoyable indeed (and profitable for the bar where we met to do this hacking!)

We didn't do as much collective hacking in the 2005-06 season, but with our 2006-07 Perl Seminar NY season about to begin, I'd like to rev up some interest among our members.

I know of some of the collective hacking projects going on in the Perl community right now, and I'll be participating in the Chicago Perl hackathon next month. But just in case I've missed any, I'd like to ask you to respond to this Meditation by posting ongoing projects (e.g., Vanilla Perl, Module::Build) and their weblinks.

And, for extra credit, if you think that any of these projects could be broken up into components suitable for face-to-face hacking by local Perlmonger groups, please so indicate.

I like online projects, but I don't like to hack or drink alone.

Thanks in advance.