Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere

[Johan Vromans]

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere

We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do
about it?

-- Johan

[Joel Limardo]

After skimming the article at the heart of the Slashdot discussion I think there are some reasons for the popularity of Perl-alternatives:

a) Large corporations have supported some languages or standardized on them (Sun/Java, Apple/Objective-C).
b) Some languages are hot because of a perceived low learning curve, widespread framework availability and adoption (JavaScript, frameworks like Mootools, JQuery, et. al.)
c) In cases where you would think Perl would be a natural choice Bash seems easier in some cases, "people are opting for the simplicity and portability of Bash rather than Perl in these cases..."

Prospective Strategies:

A: Powerhouse Corporate Endorsement

Our beloved computing industry has companies like Apple and Google at the forefront and they are both decidedly un-Perl-friendly. But who would have ever thought that these companies would be where they are today ten years ago? Certainly not me, that's for sure. My guess here is that, like everything in computing, sooner or later the computing market is going to shift again. Perhaps rather than computers or cell phones we will all start buying robots or something. Let's look into the future of computing, whatever is coming *after* this round, to become the defacto language.

B: Slash Thine Learning Curve

I'm all for building a smaller, more compact, version of Perl that is as absurdly restrictive as other languages. We can call it LockBox Perl or Nope-You-Can't-Do-That-Anymore Perl. Whatever. (There used to be something like this -- EmbPerl or something but I think it died because the Perl community didn't like it.) Allow for some special instruction at the top of scripts that allows you do actually use Perl instead of the locked-down version. That way corporations can simply say -- 'for project X you CANNOT use the cool unlock instruction.' Once Perl is in use it becomes easier to sell them onto more advanced features/syntax.

C: Wait a Minute There...

Here is where I think a marketing campaign would work. I think there is growth in the Linux user base and folks who want to experiment with the 'coolness' of Linux will inevitably experiment with scripting. The certification examinations for Linux all center on Bash, so it is no wonder that it is rising in popularity. If someone took the time to analyze this they might find the Bash adoption curve mimicking that of Linux adoption or perhaps Linux certification attempts. If this is correct then a good strategy might be to steer people toward trying Perl while they are banging away at the console. Perl was originally built to beat out scripting alternatives so this is fairly logical.

--

[eas...@mac.com]

I believe the old saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity....". Of course, it pairs well with, "Familiarity breeds contempt...and children." :)

I don't think perl needs marketing, it needs developers who anticipate and meet needs of those who might use the language to solve a problem. Most folks outside of the various communities really don't care what tool they use, just that it does the job.

e.

[Richard Foley]

It's sad, but it's true:

Developers/Engineers like to think their creation is so cool, OBVIOUSLY
everyone's going to buy one. This is/was Apple's approach.

Sales people don't care about their product quality or usefulness, so long as
everyone buys one. This is/was Microsoft's approach.

'Nuff said.

--
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html

[Nicholas Clark]

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 09:51:54PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote:
> It's sad, but it's true:
>
> Developers/Engineers like to think their creation is so cool, OBVIOUSLY
> everyone's going to buy one. This is/was Apple's approach.
>
> Sales people don't care about their product quality or usefulness, so long as
> everyone buys one. This is/was Microsoft's approach.
>
> 'Nuff said.

I disagree on that last paragraph. Because, Microsoft is a commercial
organisation. The problem it is trying to optimise is "how to make more
money", which means selling more stuff (or the same stuff for more money)

Whereas Perl is an open source creation. People are doing it to solve
other problems.

And, who is doing the marketing for Linux? After all, it's doing rather well
on servers, and portable devices.

[And, 10 years ago, who would have thought that the mobile phone platform
wars would have been between a BSD variant, and Linux derivative? :-)]

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 03:23:14PM -0500, eas...@mac.com wrote:
>
> > Perl was originally built to beat out scripting alternatives so this is fairly logical.
>

> Actually, no, it wasn't. It was built by one guy to solve a problem that one or more combinations of existing tools did not. I think pulling the 'marketing' vector won't succeed any more now than it has in the past, mostly because it eventually lacks the enthusiasm that only a few really can attain. And popularity is rarely an indicator of quality.
>
> Perhaps the question might be better asked, what does C, and even moreso Java, have that perl apparently lacks.

I'd like to stress that Science is repeatable, whereas stuff you make up is
not. ie

http://blog.timbunce.org/2008/04/12/tiobe-or-not-tiobe-lies-damned-lies-and-statistics/


but the most recent dump that emerged from the dark areas of Tiobe suggested
that C is more whatever-it-is-that-they-claim-it-is than Java

So, somehow, C's marketing is better than Java (and all the rest)

Which is strange, as C is far less trendy than Java, decades older, missing
a bunch of enterprise buzzwords, easier to screw up, not what universities
are churning out, etc

And who is marketing C? Who is making money from selling it?


Which, I think, is Elaine's point. C is doing something right. Without
actually trying. Or at least, without trying to fake it.

Nicholas Clark

PS The article is poor. It fails to claim that Python is going nowhere because
the current RHEL ships 2.6.6. Which would be only fair, given what they
comment about Perl.
PPS Note, 2.6.6, not 2.6.8. Either RHEL's numbers lie, or RHEL has failed to
keep up with 2 CVEs: http://www.python.org/getit/releases/2.6.8/

[Richard Foley]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:25:32PM +0000, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 09:51:54PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote:
> > It's sad, but it's true:
> >
> > Developers/Engineers like to think their creation is so cool, OBVIOUSLY
> > everyone's going to buy one. This is/was Apple's approach.
> >
> > Sales people don't care about their product quality or usefulness, so long as
> > everyone buys one. This is/was Microsoft's approach.
> >
> > 'Nuff said.
>
> I disagree on that last paragraph. Because, Microsoft is a commercial
> organisation. The problem it is trying to optimise is "how to make more
> money", which means selling more stuff (or the same stuff for more money)
>

I'm not sure what the major difference is there with the point I was making,
but never mind.

> Whereas Perl is an open source creation. People are doing it to solve
> other problems.
>

Yes indeed.

> And, who is doing the marketing for Linux? After all, it's doing rather well
> on servers, and portable devices.
>

It's doing extremely well, thank goodness. And the marketing is ground-swell,
which proves individuals can make a difference, if there's enough of them ;-)

[Nicholas Clark]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 05:54:53PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:25:32PM +0000, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> I'm not sure what the major difference is there with the point I was making,
> but never mind.

No, me neither.

That's the second "basic reading comprehension" failure for today.
(Fortunately the first one was a private message to my sister, so it's
not archived for posterity)

Maybe I should give up and go to the pub. (Even if the one I'm thinking of
thinks that flash is the right thing to make a website from)

> It's doing extremely well, thank goodness. And the marketing is ground-swell,
> which proves individuals can make a difference, if there's enough of them ;-)

More warn bodies!

Nicholas Clark

[Johan Vromans]

eas...@mac.com writes:

> I don't think perl needs marketing, it needs developers who anticipate
> and meet needs of those who might use the language to solve a problem.
> Most folks outside of the various communities really don't care what
> tool they use, just that it does the job.

An impressive list of Perl success stories would surely do no harm.

-- Johan

[Richard Foley]

s/warn/warm/ # ?

--
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html

[eas...@mac.com]

On Feb 1, 2013, at 3:43 AM, Johan Vromans <jvro...@squirrel.nl> wrote:
>
> An impressive list of Perl success stories would surely do no harm.

Well, ORA has a few at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/perl/news/success_stories.html

Perl is a niche language which is a way of saying it has a well defined range of purpose and is one of the reasons it's still on the map.

If there is one thing that could be done, it's cleaning up CPAN which is simultaneously the best thing that ever happened to Perl and the worst thing that ever happened to Perl. Even the most dedicated Perl fanatic cannot help but be frustrated when installing 1 module becomes a 100 module install marathon. I don't anticipate that will be embraced any more now than in the past when I have attempted to get some enthusiasm behind such a project but, I can always hope for the future. :)

e.

[Shlomi Fish]

To quote Larry Wall from http://www.perl.com/pub/1997/wall/keynote.html :

<<<<<
I have a book on my bookshelf that I've never read, but that has a great title.
It says, "All Truth is God's Truth." And I believe that. The most viable belief
systems are those that can reach out and incorporate new ideas, new memes, new
metaphors, new interfaces, new extensions, new ways of doing things. My goal
this year is to try to get Perl to reach out and cooperate with Java. I know it
may be difficult for some of you to swallow, but Java is not the enemy. Nor is
Lisp, or Python, or Tcl. That is not to say that these languages don't have
good and bad points. I am not a cultural relativist. Nor am I a linguistic
relativist. In case you hadn't noticed. :-)
>>>>>

Throughout history, various religions, cultures, human languages, works of art,
and other idea systems, were mixed-and-matched cross-pollinated one another,
were forked and splinterred, and brought new memes into everywhere. An idea
system that did not incorporate ideas from elsewhere quickly became stagnated
and inbred, and were then largely forgotten.

Furthermore, some idea systems “died”. Few people nowadays are pure Stoicists
(see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism ) and even the most devote Jews don't
take the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentateuch_%28disambiguation%29 to its
letter, and no one nowadays wants to program in Fortran I, COBOL or ALGOL
(and yes, programming languages are, aside from their utility, idea systems).
But the idea systems behind these languages live on.

The Perl idea system has proven incredibly influential on most programming
languages that came after it, so it has won. Maybe most people no longer find
it adequate to use Perl 5, or think that some more in vogue languages are
better, but the Perl influence lives on. I'm not a Perl tribalist, in the sense
that if my customer prefers something else, then I use it, and try to make the
best of the situation, even though I'm not 100% happy, which like I note in
http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1747.html is something that Cognitive Therapy
now recommends to do based on Stoicism. And I've started to write some projects
in Ruby.

People have been crying that Perl is dead, but it is very much alive, just as
most people in the United States and in Great Britain have not heard of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great or of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin , but their incredible legacy still lives
on, and many people carry the “memes” that they originate or establish in their
mind and hearts.

So what should we do:

1. Continue to improve perl, Perl and CPAN. We cannot have perl 5 stagnate, and
the Perl 6 implementations are still incomplete and tend to be
under-performing.

2. Don't worry about people using Perl instead of something else that still
carries its legacy, or different legacies.

3. Continue to import new ideas from other places.

4. Continue our tendency to say that “There's more than one way to do it”
implies that some of these ways are using other programming languages, and that
some languages got some things right more than Perl 5 or even Perl 6, or just
differently - http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/57811.html .

5. Tell people that newer is not necessarily better.

6. Don't worry about battling Perl against statistical accusations of
stagnations like TIOBE , GitHub statistics, Google trends, etc. , because these
things are silly “My schwartz is bigger than yours” which the uninformed masses
may fall for, but intelligent and wise people, who are the true movers and
doers, don’t.

7. Finally, the language called “Perl 5” that we will use 20 years from now will
be very different than the perl-5.000, but it will be more modern, more
adapted to the times and hopefully better. And I'm almost sure that Perl’s
legacy will live on and Perl will be remembered, even if no one uses something
called “Perl”.

-----------------------------------

I hope I made myself clear. Furthermore, a lot of recent trends can be dismissed
as silly, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat -s, but lolcats
have such a low barrier for entry (almost everyone can take a photo of a cat, or
whatever and caption it using Inkscape or whatever), and a lot of
lolcats are funny or amusing (yet often insightful). It is a whole new idea
system and a very subversive at that, so much that both China and Iran blocked
the Cheezburger network in their firewall, because they are afraid of it
weakening their political power-structures and dogma (and as silly as it may
seem, they are right about that).

The important thing to note is that one should “embrace change”. See:

http://www.robcottingham.ca/cartoon/archive/this-brain-this-brain-fire/

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
What does "Zionism" mean? - http://shlom.in/def-zionism

When Chuck Norris uses git, he takes a coffee break after initiating every git
commit. And then he waits for the commit to finish.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .

[Peter Scott]

On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100, Johan Vromans wrote:
> http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-

are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere
>
> We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do
> about it?

This is, basically, Jon Orwant's prophecy coming home to roost: "People
are going to move on and do something else." If Perl 6 was ready for
prime time, it would be a different story.

Yesterday I was talking with a colleague about configuration management
frameworks like Chef, Puppet, and Saltstack. Those are Python- and Ruby-
based. He asked whether there was anything in that family based on
Perl. After extensive searching, I was forced to conclude that there
wasn't. If there had been, we would have tried to make it work. That
sucked. Not trying to blame anyone, and not trying to claim I have an
answer. Just generally disappointed.

--
Peter Scott
http://www.perlmedic.com/ http://www.perldebugged.com/
http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0137001274
http://www.oreillyschool.com/certificates/perl-programming.php

[Jeremy Fluhmann]

On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Peter Scott <Pe...@psdt.com> wrote:

On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100, Johan Vromans wrote:
> http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-

are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere
>
> We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do
> about it?

This is, basically, Jon Orwant's prophecy coming home to roost: "People
are going to move on and do something else."  If Perl 6 was ready for
prime time, it would be a different story.

Yesterday I was talking with a colleague about configuration management
frameworks like Chef, Puppet, and Saltstack.  Those are Python- and Ruby-
based.  He asked whether there was anything in that family based on
Perl.  After extensive searching, I was forced to conclude that there
wasn't.  If there had been, we would have tried to make it work.  That
sucked.  Not trying to blame anyone, and not trying to claim I have an
answer.  Just generally disappointed.

Just to throw out there something I came across a while back: 

(R)?ex - http://rexify.org/

Written in Perl and appears to be very similar to Ansible.

Jeremy

-- 

Jeremy Fluhmann
http://twitter.com/jfluhmann
http://jfluhmann.edublogs.org
http://linkedin.com/in/jfluhmann
Texas Linux Fest - http://www.texaslinuxfest.org
Texas Open Source Project - http://texos.org
YAPC::NA 2013 - http://www.yapcna.org/yn2013/

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Johan,

On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100
Johan Vromans <jvro...@squirrel.nl> wrote:

I now have something more to add. Recently I've done some small (but important)
tweaks to http://perl-begin.org/ to make the intent of it clearer, and to avoid
some what I perceived as pointless marketing-speak. People should now be able to
use it to learn Perl immediately and effectively, without all the advocacy
speak.

As I noted on #perl , I suspect that part of the reason most people still prefer
jQuery ( http://jquery.com/ - the “write less, do more” JS library) instead of
Angular JS ( http://angularjs.org/ - the “Superheroic JavaScript MVW
Framework”) is because jQuery’s motto tells you why you would want to use it,
while Angular JS uses hyperbolic adjectives (“Superheroic” - bleh).
As Mark Twain notes in
http://palc.sd40.bc.ca/palc/Archive/writingtips/twainadjectives.htm :

<<<<<
When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most
of them—then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close
together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a
wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get
rid of as any other vice
>>>>>

I really liked the old http://www.cpan.org/ motto of “stop reinventing wheels -
start building spaceships” because it uses a good analogy from something more
tangible than software, for the philosophy behind CPAN. Many people now feel
that Perl 5 and perl 5 are almost useless without the ability to use external
CPAN modules, and we at #perl on Freenode have been suffering a lot of heat
from people who want to use Perl without it. That put aside, I think that
making some CPAN distributions and packages have less dependencies, faster to
load (Moo instead of Moose, etc.), and less intimidating will be a good thing.
One of the criticisms I heard about the Ruby and Ruby gems culture is that
“everything is a framework” and that “a simple script to move files. 100 MB of
RAM”.

In any case, I suggest we promote Perl simply by hacking: improving existing
CPAN distributions and other applications, creating new ones that we lack (like
CMSes, etc.), and not worry too much about whether or not Perl is the
hippest/most-in-vogue/coolest/"OMG-Ponies!!!"/etc. language, because hip and
fashions come and go (HTML -> Dynamic HTML -> Web 2.0 -> HTML 5 anyone?). A lot
of people have been criticising languages like C and C++ all the time with all
sorts of criticisms, but both are popular among open-source developers, and
still used in production a lot[C++] and often are the best choice. Perl has some
advantages over Ruby or Python or JavaScript or CoffeeScript or whatever, even
in the core language (to say nothing about CPAN), and I find that Ruby or
Python's implicit scoping cause too many problems and are unpredictable, which
is why I normally still prefer using Perl 5.

So stop worrying, because eventually anti-something hype or propaganda is
getting old, and people use common sense and logic to criticise it, and they
eventually don't buy it even if the media keeps parroting the same something.
Like we say in Hebrew, “the lie does not have legs”. Even if the television or
mainstream media is broadcasting non-stop propaganda, most of the people who
matter will rather buy into stuff they see on the Internet, even if it seems
completely irrelevant or even silly such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangnam_Style or whatever.

Maybe I'm too naïve and optimistic (and have a positive view of life, humans,
and the world), but I think that “truth” will eventually prevail, only that we
must constantly seek better and more up-to-date “truth”s, because “existence
exists” and is dynamic and there will never be a “Theory of Everything” or the
“Omega” of human enlightenment. We must constantly seek it. I just hope that
humanity or our planet does not perish in this course.

[ Sorry for the flow of consciousness towards the end. ]

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

{{{
[C++] - I personally feel that C++ gives me too much rope to hang myself, so in
order to save me from myself, I prefer sticking to C, but it seems to work fine
in projects such as Qt, KDE, or web browsers or whatever, where programmers are
more clueful than I am, at least in this respect.

}}}

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/

Perl Humour - http://perl-begin.org/humour/

The Spanish Inquisition does not expect Chuck Norris.

[Peter Scott]

On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 23:21:24 -0600, Jeremy Fluhmann wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Peter Scott <Pe...@psdt.com> wrote:
>> Yesterday I was talking with a colleague about configuration management
>> frameworks like Chef, Puppet, and Saltstack. Those are Python- and
>> Ruby- based. He asked whether there was anything in that family based
>> on Perl. After extensive searching, I was forced to conclude that
>> there wasn't.
>>
>>

> Just to throw out there something I came across a while back: (R)?ex -
> http://rexify.org/
> Written in Perl and appears to be very similar to Ansible.

Thank you! That appears well worth a closer look.

[eas...@mac.com]

On Feb 2, 2013, at 11:12 PM, Peter Scott <Pe...@PSDT.com> wrote:
>
> This is, basically, Jon Orwant's prophecy coming home to roost: "People
> are going to move on and do something else." If Perl 6 was ready for
> prime time, it would be a different story.

Jon and I had the same thought, but he for the more technical aspect and I for the more social aspect. That P6 isn't ready yet, even after so many years, isn't really wholly to blame for the lack of vigor in numbers of users. That we are the same people having the same conversation 15 years on might have more to do with it than anything.

e.

[Georgios Magklaras]

Did C ever make serious money? What was the evolution rate of C? Is C or not the basis of systems programming?

My point is that a good language withstands time because its useful. Perl (5) is in use and will be in use. Not because is bad/good and/or Perl 6 will come into place, but due to a fact it has a domain. And Perl has a domain not because other languages cannot do what Perl does, but due to the fact they cannot do it the WAY Perl does.

The way a language is constructed semantically has a one to one correspondence with the way your brain works. For some people, Perl's syntax hits a sweet spot and they stick to it. For others, it is confusing, alien and can - apparently - make you a bad programmer (I have seen bad programmers in every programming language I know, so that's not a characteristic of Perl).

In the same way, people that parallel program, work with Intel's extensions/compilers, CUDA and/or Erlang. Try to convince an Erlang programmer that his language is obsolete. They will laugh at you and point out many examples.

Conclusion: A language is walking down the road of obsolescence when its semantic structure becomes irrelevant to the way people think and its domain dies. Neither of that is true for Perl (5) and the whole shebang has very little to do with Perl 6. Frankly, I do not see any original point in this article, IMHO.

 

Best regards,

-- 
-- 
George Magklaras PhD
RHCE no: 805008309135525
 
Head of IT/Senior Systems Engineer
Biotechnology Center of Oslo and
the Norwegian Center for Molecular Medicine/
Vitenskapelig Databehandling (VD) - 
Research Computing Services

EMBnet TMPC Chair

http://folk.uio.no/georgios
http://hpc.uio.no

Tel: +47 22840535 

[G. Wade Johnson]

On Sun, 3 Feb 2013 10:04:42 +0200
Shlomi Fish <shl...@shlomifish.org> wrote:

[snip]

> -> Web 2.0 -> HTML 5 anyone?). A lot of people have been criticising
> languages like C and C++ all the time with all sorts of criticisms,
> but both are popular among open-source developers, and still used in
> production a lot[C++] and often are the best choice. Perl has some
> advantages over Ruby or Python or JavaScript or CoffeeScript or

[snip]

This reminds me of one of my favorite programming language quotes:

"There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always
bitch about and those nobody uses." --- Bjarne Stroustrup

G. Wade
--
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing. -- Alan Perlis

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Georgios,

Have not read the original article, but I agree. BTW, on ##programming on
Freenode, people have been bitching about every language under the sun.

My signature quote this time is relevant, and is taken from
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/COBOL-the-New-Age-Programming-Language/ ,
as a reference to Python’s home page where they used to boast that “NASA uses
COBOL” which while technically true, is not fully honest, because given NASA’s
history, budget, and diversity, it uses a very large number of old and new
programming languages and other technologies. Also see:

* http://xkcd.com/519/

( Moreover, NASA’s software development unit is just the tip of the iceberg. )

But I guess I should not give a Midrash
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrash ; “study” - not “mid-rash” ) to a joke.

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/

Rethinking CPAN - http://shlom.in/rethinking-cpan

NASA Uses COBOL.

[Nicholas Clark]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 06:39:14PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote:
> s/warn/warm/ # ?

Yes,

> On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 05:01:21PM +0000, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> > More warn bodies!

Although really, I think that zombies have a better plan for what is needed.
:-)

Nicholas Clark

[Nicholas Clark]

Yes. Surprisingly familiar set of names, most I recognise from at least 10
years ago.

Why aren't there new names?

(The breeding programme will take time to deliver results. Something needs
to change in the meantime)

Nicholas Clark

[eas...@mac.com]

On Feb 5, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Nicholas Clark <ni...@ccl4.org> wrote:
>
> Yes. Surprisingly familiar set of names, most I recognise from at least 10
> years ago.
>
> Why aren't there new names?

Likely the same reason(s) as 10 or more years ago. :)

> (The breeding programme will take time to deliver results. Something needs
> to change in the meantime)

Well, there have been a lot of words wasted on "Why aren't there more women in $x?" for just as many years with just as little change and I do think the correlation is meaningful if not causation. The breeding programme does appear to be producing quite a few females so you'd think there'd be more earnest investigation instead of believing the world will be miraculously changed in a few years, but I'm not optimistic such will be the case.

An anecdote I'm fond of sharing since it still makes me laugh is when I noticed a group of 4yo pre-schoolers playing with a European layer puzzle of the human body (EU for anatomical realism) I asked them, "What is the largest organ in the human body?" Without exception, the girls pointed to their head or their hearts and the boys, well, the boys all pointed to the most cherished of male body parts. I managed to not make ribald comments leading to nightmares or corruption of such innocent souls and soldiered on informing them that, no, the skin is the largest of the organs in the human body. Again I asked the question and the girls, without exception, all pointed to their skin and, the boys all pointed to their cherished member. Some things don't change. :)

If you want change, you have to do more than ask why and have a panel of talking heads at a conference...or announce a new version of the language in hopes that change can be driven merely by external novelty.

e.

[David H. Adler]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2013 at 02:30:03PM -0500, eas...@mac.com wrote:
>
> On Feb 5, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Nicholas Clark <ni...@ccl4.org> wrote:
> >
> > Yes. Surprisingly familiar set of names, most I recognise from at least 10
> > years ago.
> >
> > Why aren't there new names?
>
> Likely the same reason(s) as 10 or more years ago. :)
>
> > (The breeding programme will take time to deliver results. Something needs
> > to change in the meantime)
>
> Well, there have been a lot of words wasted on "Why aren't there more
> women in $x?" for just as many years with just as little change and I
> do think the correlation is meaningful if not causation. The breeding
> programme does appear to be producing quite a few females so you'd
> think there'd be more earnest investigation instead of believing the
> world will be miraculously changed in a few years, but I'm not
> optimistic such will be the case.

I was going to make some kind of actually relevant contribution, but as
I am ill, it would probably come out all wrong. I'll try to remember to
say something later if this doesn't kill me.

dha

--
David H. Adler - <d...@panix.com> - http://www.panix.com/~dha/
Perl gives you enough rope to hang yourself and your neighbor.
- Randal L. Schwartz

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi e,

On Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:30:03 -0500
eas...@mac.com wrote:

>
> On Feb 5, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Nicholas Clark <ni...@ccl4.org> wrote:
> >
> > Yes. Surprisingly familiar set of names, most I recognise from at least 10
> > years ago.
> >
> > Why aren't there new names?
>
> Likely the same reason(s) as 10 or more years ago. :)
>
> > (The breeding programme will take time to deliver results. Something needs
> > to change in the meantime)
>
> Well, there have been a lot of words wasted on "Why aren't there more women
> in $x?" for just as many years with just as little change and I do think the
> correlation is meaningful if not causation. The breeding programme does
> appear to be producing quite a few females so you'd think there'd be more
> earnest investigation instead of believing the world will be miraculously
> changed in a few years, but I'm not optimistic such will be the case.
>

I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active contributor to
advo...@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is that Feminists (and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s
- a term which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever
behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female
developers who wish to start, which causes them to do nothings towards them (as
a worst of all possible solutions - see
http://motivator-and-inspirator.blogspot.co.il/2010/07/grandfather-grandson-and-donkeys.html
), and make the ground fertile for constant abuse by the sexist
“naked pics, plz” people.

So I think it is better to encourage post-Feminist / post-Buffy /
post-Friends / etc. female hackers’ heroines. Trying to tout my own horn, here
is some ( hopefully ) entertaining and amusing post-Buffy / post-Feminist online
literature I've written:

* http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ - the Human Hacking Field
Guide - “An unlikely female computer hacker (= software enthusiast, not a
computer intruder)-wannabe is getting taught by an even more unlikely female
computer hacker. It takes place in Los Angeles, California and is written in
English. ”

* http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/ - a
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode with some loose ends, which is featuring
Katie Jacobson, a typical http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y female
software hacker (originally from Berkeley, California, a Technion graduate and
then working as a system administrator on a private merceneries star ship)
who is excited (or sometimes agitated) to experience the various farfetched
wonders my imaginary world crossing of Star Trek TNG/DS9, Buffy, Judaism,
Objectivism and Neo-Objectivism, geek culture and many other lesser influences.
Furthermore, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadzia_Dax and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kira_Nerys also play important rules there as
does Deborah the Prophet.

* https://github.com/shlomif/Selina-Mandrake ;
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Selina-Mandrake/ - “Selina Mandrake - The
Slayer” - Selina is an unusual vampire slayer, who while being an
Anglo-American student, with aspirations of becoming a Near East
Archaelogist, testifies that: “I’m not into martial arts, and I’m really
clumsy. As much as I like playing Basketball (and I do), I royally suck at it…
”.

Despite all that, using the fact that she knows enough about the Near East,
Judaism/Semitic culture, and popular culture, she is able of slaying all the
demons she encounter, but while finding the entire process extremely emotional.

-----------------

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

> An anecdote I'm fond of sharing since it still makes me laugh is when I
> noticed a group of 4yo pre-schoolers playing with a European layer puzzle of
> the human body (EU for anatomical realism) I asked them, "What is the largest
> organ in the human body?" Without exception, the girls pointed to their head
> or their hearts and the boys, well, the boys all pointed to the most
> cherished of male body parts. I managed to not make ribald comments leading
> to nightmares or corruption of such innocent souls and soldiered on informing
> them that, no, the skin is the largest of the organs in the human body. Again
> I asked the question and the girls, without exception, all pointed to their
> skin and, the boys all pointed to their cherished member. Some things don't
> change. :)
>
> If you want change, you have to do more than ask why and have a panel of
> talking heads at a conference...or announce a new version of the language in
> hopes that change can be driven merely by external novelty.
>
> e.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/

The Case for File Swapping - http://shlom.in/file-swap

The X in XSLT stands for eXtermination.

[eas...@mac.com]

On Feb 5, 2013, at 10:55 PM, Shlomi Fish <shl...@shlomifish.org> wrote:
>
> So I think it is better to encourage post-Feminist / post-Buffy /
> post-Friends / etc. female hackers’ heroines. Trying to tout my own horn, here
> is some ( hopefully ) entertaining and amusing post-Buffy / post-Feminist online
> literature I've written:

So self-promoting some sort of cringeworthy fantasy fem-hero fiction is somehow illuminating? You missed the point...

What we want to believe and what is real are often two different things, just as the toddlers clung to what they believed was the right answer versus
the actual right answer. These are the lies we tell ourselves much like the term 'meritocracy' is so highly touted, so firmly held as a virtue of open source and, yet, if closely examined isn't really quite true if we're being completely honest with ourselves. When Larry gave the YAPC keynote in STL in 2002 which was on the theme of more women in perl using Tolkien's pantheon of heroic women I cringed, not because I don't enjoy the genre, but because if anyone needs fewer fictional ideas about women it would be those in the audience nodding their heads.

In order for change to occur, you're going to have to challenge what you believe to be are unassailable truths.

e.

[Jacinta Richardson]

On 06/02/13 14:55, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active
> contributor to advo...@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is
> that Feminists (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s - a term
> which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever
> behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female
> developers who wish to start,

I realise this is derailing the thread further, but I'm going to object
to this. Shlomi, there are *many*, *many* men in the Perl community who
manage to get along with the women in the Perl community without any
gender-related problems at all.

For starters, they don't insist on using "guruess" or "hackeress" after
being told that "guru" and "hacker" were not originally gendered and
don't need to be so (and I'm delighted to see that you've improved in
this area). They're also the ones who wouldn't even bring up the word
feminazi if trying to make your point, when it has never meant the same
thing and is and always has been a deliberate slur against feminism.
They're also the ones who don't jump to point the finger at feminists
for what is clearly a society-wide problem.

Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at
fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay.
It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be
obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up to
your tech group if she's there because her boyfriend is, or who her
boyfriend is, or even if she has a boyfriend, is also not okay. If
someone is correcting you on what you view to be relatively mild
transgressions perhaps it means that mostly you're doing okay. Or,
occasionally, perhaps it means you didn't understand that your
transgression isn't that mild.

As a feminist, I can say with pride that (although not perfect) the Perl
community at large is my favourite group of tech people to hang out with
largely because it's the least sexist. Sure, I got asked what the
partners' program was like, less than an hour after my talk at YAPC::EU
and sure, I get challenged to prove my Perl credibility by people who
don't know who I am at YAPC::NA (a few times) but mostly this is a
really good crowd.

So I don't agree at all that "part of the problem is that Feminists ...

are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male

hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start," The Perl
community has many men who behave wonderfully towards women who wish to
start in Perl, and I (and I'm sure a lot of feminists) are delighted
with that. What do I mean about behaving "wonderfully"? I mean
treating them as you should treat any other starting developer: assume
competence, determine background, point out appropriate resources and
provide help when it is requested, and only that help, versus "here let
me finish it for you".

I don't think that Perl's decline in popularity is all that related to
why Perl has too few women in its communities. Over time, my training
classes have probably averaged 25-30% women (which is on-par with
women's representation in IT in business). Skud's survey (years ago)
suggested 6% women (which is 3 times higher than women's representation
in open source for pleasure, although the survey may have been answered
by people who only worked in open source for work). I think Perl has
too few women in its communities for almost all the same reasons that
too few women are involved in open source for pleasure, and they're well
documented elsewhere. That is, this isn't a Perl problem, but a wider
problem. All we can do is promote (haha) the strengths of our community
and treat our newcomers well.

All the best,

Jacinta

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Jacinta,

we may be straying off-topic here.

Before I answer your question, let me add that I think we should train
potential female (and male) contributors to not give up so easily after running
into a potential difficulty. In
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ , Jennifer is suffering a lot
of verbal abuse from Erisa at first (who is a girl no less), but doesn't give
up and eventually is able to become a competent FOSS developer. Larry Lessig
also talked about why he keeps on blogging here despite being really offended
from bad comments here:

http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/How_to_start_contributing_to_or_using_Open_Source_Software#Some_Mental_Preparation

It's inevitable to face hardship and abuse, because even I, as a guy, faced
them, and still do, and have to know how to overcome them. On the other hand, a
female Dutch open-source developer (in her 50s or so - mother to several
20-years old, etc.) told me that she would give up much more easily on
some of my non-sexist related problems I ran into and never try to contribute
to that community again.

I think trying to restructure a so-called-hostile community is like making the
mountain come to Muhammad. On the other hand, a single motivated person with
some amount of creative thinking, and who is not willing to give up can make a
world of a difference. Samantha Smith
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith ) changed the fate of the cold
war (for the better), by simply writing a letter (and she was a 10-years old
child). It's now even easier to do that using the Internet.

now on to what you said:

On Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:54:29 +1100
Jacinta Richardson <jar...@perltraining.com.au> wrote:

> On 06/02/13 14:55, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active
> > contributor to advo...@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is
> > that Feminists (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s - a term
> > which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever
> > behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female
> > developers who wish to start,
>
> I realise this is derailing the thread further, but I'm going to object
> to this. Shlomi, there are *many*, *many* men in the Perl community who
> manage to get along with the women in the Perl community without any
> gender-related problems at all.
>
> For starters, they don't insist on using "guruess" or "hackeress" after
> being told that "guru" and "hacker" were not originally gendered and
> don't need to be so (and I'm delighted to see that you've improved in
> this area).

Thanks! Anyway, some people may be tempted to use these terms because they are
speakers of foreign languages which have gendered nouns, adjectives, etc. and
it influences their thoughts, even in English. So you shouldn't jump the gun at
them and accuse them of being sexist, because then you're adding oil to the
fire.

> They're also the ones who wouldn't even bring up the word
> feminazi if trying to make your point, when it has never meant the same
> thing and is and always has been a deliberate slur against feminism.
> They're also the ones who don't jump to point the finger at feminists
> for what is clearly a society-wide problem.
>

“Society-wide problems” can be changed by courageous individuals who instead
of blaming their problems on the world at large, take simple yet clever
actions (like those who play role-playing games know to take), and know better
than to give up.

> Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at
> fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay.
> It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be
> obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up to
> your tech group if she's there because her boyfriend is, or who her
> boyfriend is, or even if she has a boyfriend, is also not okay.

Why not? While you shouldn't ask a woman if she has a boyfriend right at the
beginning of the conversation, it's not such a bad question to ask later on.
But after reading the "HOWTO encourage women in open source", I felt a lot of
guilt from actually thinking about talking with the women who attended it, and
now I realise it was baseless.

> If
> someone is correcting you on what you view to be relatively mild
> transgressions perhaps it means that mostly you're doing okay. Or,
> occasionally, perhaps it means you didn't understand that your
> transgression isn't that mild.
>
> As a feminist, I can say with pride that (although not perfect) the Perl
> community at large is my favourite group of tech people to hang out with
> largely because it's the least sexist. Sure, I got asked what the
> partners' program was like, less than an hour after my talk at YAPC::EU
> and sure, I get challenged to prove my Perl credibility by people who
> don't know who I am at YAPC::NA (a few times) but mostly this is a
> really good crowd.

I'm glad. :-). I also think that the Mageia Linux community, however small, has
been woman friendly, and there are several prominent women active there on
mailing lists, web forums, IRC, etc.

>
> So I don't agree at all that "part of the problem is that Feminists ...
> are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male
> hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start," The Perl
> community has many men who behave wonderfully towards women who wish to
> start in Perl, and I (and I'm sure a lot of feminists) are delighted
> with that. What do I mean about behaving "wonderfully"? I mean
> treating them as you should treat any other starting developer: assume
> competence, determine background, point out appropriate resources and
> provide help when it is requested, and only that help, versus "here let
> me finish it for you".

My tangent about Feminists not being happy, was not related to the Perl
community, just said as a stream-of-consciousness thing. Thing is many women
will misinterpret men trying to help from whatever reason, as harmful, and
criticise it or attack it, just like Terry Pratchett described
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rincewind as

<<<
Rincewind is one of those people who gets in the way of his own happiness.
If it was raining kisses he'd be the only person with an umbrella.
(CIX Pratchett Conference)
>>>

You should seize opportunities when you run into them instead of getting into
useless paranoia about the motivation of the other party.

>
> I don't think that Perl's decline in popularity is all that related to
> why Perl has too few women in its communities.

Neither do I.

> Over time, my training
> classes have probably averaged 25-30% women (which is on-par with
> women's representation in IT in business). Skud's survey (years ago)
> suggested 6% women (which is 3 times higher than women's representation
> in open source for pleasure, although the survey may have been answered
> by people who only worked in open source for work). I think Perl has
> too few women in its communities for almost all the same reasons that
> too few women are involved in open source for pleasure, and they're well
> documented elsewhere. That is, this isn't a Perl problem, but a wider
> problem. All we can do is promote (haha) the strengths of our community
> and treat our newcomers well.
>
> All the best,
>
> Jacinta
>

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/

Stop Using MSIE - http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/

Chuck Norris is the ghost author of the entire Debian GNU/Linux distribution.
And he wrote it in 24 hours, while taking snack breaks.

[eas...@mac.com]

On Feb 6, 2013, at 7:54 PM, Jacinta Richardson <jar...@perltraining.com.au> wrote:
>
> I don't think that Perl's decline in popularity is all that related to why Perl has too few women in its communities. Over time, my training classes have probably averaged 25-30% women (which is on-par with women's representation in IT in business). Skud's survey (years ago) suggested 6% women (which is 3 times higher than women's representation in open source for pleasure, although the survey may have been answered by people who only worked in open source for work). I think Perl has too few women in its communities for almost all the same reasons that too few women are involved in open source for pleasure, and they're well documented elsewhere. That is, this isn't a Perl problem, but a wider problem. All we can do is promote (haha) the strengths of our community and treat our newcomers well.

I knew that anecdote would take this in the wrong direction, but I couldn't resist as it was a truly amusing moment and, at the same time, a revelation of human nature. You're right, it's not just a Perl problem, but we wouldn't be here 10+ years later talking about the same problems with the same people if the issue was solely a technical one.

I think numbers, percentages, or the generally nice boys in the close community that we are familiar with (I did marry one...) may be misleading not only because there's plenty of words spent on the subject, probably more from men than women, but if we are leaving our own wishful thinking behind, a world where sexism is no longer an issue, a company like GoDaddy would be out of business overnight (for those outside of the US, see YouTube for GoDaddy commercials...QED). Words and documented lists of reasons why don't appear to be very effective. It's an issue, but that it's still an issue that gets the soft bokeh of a lovely leica 50mm lens in low light means there's a lot of other things that don't see the crisp light of midday. I spent a year in Switzerland which was like stepping into a German version of "Mad Men" set in the modern world without mid-century modern hipness, but with all the sexism still intact and overtly enforced. It was an interesting experience in how everything can look so similar as long as you don't challenge the status quo...and don't flush your toilet after 10pm or before 6am. :)

So, to bring it back to what I was originally getting at...questions and words are only useful if the answers are more than just the lies we tell ourselves and others because it's what we and others want to hear. In the words of Dr. House, "Everybody lies."

e.

[Jacinta Richardson]

On 07/02/13 13:49, Shlomi Fish wrote:

Before I answer your question, let me add that I think we should train
potential female (and male) contributors to not give up so easily after running
into a potential difficulty.

I have no idea how you "train" potential contributors to not give up but you don't do it by being an arse.  Studies show that boys are encouraged to keep trying, and girls are often told "oh, let me do it for you" from very, very young ages.  That seems like training potential female contributors to give up and after a lifetime of that kind of training I don't see it as very surprising that some women are likely to stumble and give up rather than be tenacious.  Sad, but not surprising.

However, having said that, we're not held to what we learned as children.  There are many professions which require tenacity, such as athletics, law, business management...; and so women can and do learn such skills.  It's just worth understanding that some women are coming into learning such skills at a disadvantage to those men who were lucky enough to be taught them for the majority of their lives.

There's another key difference that should be recognised, and the situation isn't that there is a dire shortage of women who know Perl (25-30% of Perl programmers out in business), there's a dire shortage of women involved in the Perl community. (between 2 and 6%)  The tenacious women are learning Perl, they're just doing so for work.  Not for fun. 

I suspect that when there are people who are approaching the Perl community in an attempt to try to learn to program, or who already know how to program and want to learn Perl, we have to compete with other fun pursuits.  When the few bad apples in the community are allowed to behave badly towards them, that's not fun.  If learning Perl isn't fun, they won't stay.  Why would they?  There are other, more fun things to do than be insulted, treated badly, harassed or otherwise in pursuit of something you thought could be cool.  This is a problem for Perl and, in my opinion, for programming in general - programming is not competing as well against other fun pursuits.

It's also worth noting that when people flame others on mailing lists, or abuse others in IRC channels, active contributors also go away.  You can lose up to 25% of your project just from one long flame-war.  People are in open source for fun.  Take the fun away, make it worse than work, and lots of them won't stay.  It's easy to find entertainment on line these days that doesn't involve dealing with people who are being arses.

Telling people that they have to have a thick skin, in order to have fun, will not work into the future.  Knowing Perl or being a developer in a lot of open source is no longer enough of a hallowed destination that it's sufficient reward for weathering the abuse between newbie and achievement.  Perl (and a lot of open source) needs new developers more than it needs developers with thick skins.  Getting a thick skin isn't fun.  It doesn't matter what you had to go through.

It's inevitable to face hardship and abuse, because even I, as a guy, faced
them, and still do, and have to know how to overcome them.

Yes, men face abuse too. The abuse men face is rarely gendered.  Women may face worse abuse if their gender is known than you likely have any idea about.  Regardless, strangely enough, abuse is not fun regardless of your gender.  Some people will stick through it, but I can't blame the people who don't.

I think trying to restructure a so-called-hostile community is like making the
mountain come to Muhammad. On the other hand, a single motivated person with
some amount of creative thinking, and who is not willing to give up can make a
world of a difference.

Hostile communities are not fun for people who don't want to show off how much of an arse they can be.   If we want people to come to learn Perl and participate in the Perl community, because Perl is fun (and as a language I really believe it is) then we need to make sure that participating in the Perl community is fun.  Or at least we need to make sure that participating doesn't suck. 

Yes, individual motivated people can change things, they do all the time.  People who stand against hostile behaviour and work to welcome and encourage all potential contributors are changing things.  People who encourage involvement and shared decision making are changing things.  People who make sure that their actions are increasing the level of fun rather than sucking it out, are changing things.

On Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:54:29 +1100
Jacinta Richardson <jar...@perltraining.com.au> wrote:

Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at 
fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay.  
It just isn't.  Things like using soft porn in slides should be 
obviously not okay.  But things like asking a woman who's turned up to 
your tech group if she's there because her boyfriend is, or who her 
boyfriend is, or even if she has a boyfriend, is also not okay. 

Why not? While you shouldn't ask a woman if she has a boyfriend right at the
beginning of the conversation, it's not such a bad question to ask later on.

Really?

Do you have any idea how creepy it is to turn up to a gathering for the first time, as a woman, and have numerous guys try to work into the conversation a question on what your relationship status is?  Can't you just assume that women are there for technical reasons and not to be hit on endlessly, because that's what asking a woman about her relationship status is, it's a precursor to hitting on her, not just polite conversation.  Having that conversation every time I attend new technology gatherings (where I'm not previously known) is tedious and - guess what?! It's not fun.

After she's been going a few times, and you've established a rapport - if you do, *maybe* you could ask her then, although if she wants you to know she'll probably have said.

Safer questions:

* How are you?
* What got you interested into <technical topic>?
* Is this your first time here?
* Do you work with <technical topic>?
* What do you do?
* Have you been to any <similar technical groups>?
* Have you heard about <upcoming conference>?
* Would you be interested in giving a talk yourself at <technical group>?

see, all of these are the same kinds of questions that you could ask a new man visiting.  It's not that hard; if you wouldn't find it of dire important to know the sexuality and relationship status of a new person because they're a man, then forgo trying to find that out from a new person just because they're a woman.

Have fun!

    Jacinta

[Elaine Ashton]

On Feb 7, 2013, at 10:56 PM, Jacinta Richardson <jar...@perltraining.com.au> wrote:

There's another key difference that should be recognised, and the situation isn't that there is a dire shortage of women who know Perl (25-30% of Perl programmers out in business), there's a dire shortage of women involved in the Perl community. (between 2 and 6%)  The tenacious women are learning Perl, they're just doing so for work.  Not for fun. 

I'd say that the percentage is higher as women are very well represented in system administration where perl remains a very common tool, but as plumbers we aren't thought of until something breaks. I'm one of those crabby sorts and I was pleasantly surprised by the perl folks at the first perl conference since I had spent years lurking as a male persona on irc and usenet. I'll admit the linguistic nerdery drew me in, but the whisky snobbery certainly sealed the deal. I think the appeal of the perl community is the wide variety of interests and the curiosity for more. The fun of the perl community isn't with perl but with everything else.

I will also say that I gave up on many things not because it wasn't fun but because there are those who don't have basic social graces and who make the thought of going to the dentist vs doing something for the perl community a no-contest idea...at least the dentist offers painkillers and a smile. 

Since I'm on about telling the truth and trying to guilt the silent into believing that silence is not a helpful act, I'll be direct about the history that Shlomi asked me for ownership a few years ago and I refused because he's even more self-promoting than Randal and I didn't want a Perl History according to a megalomaniacal dude who filled the timeline with his own milestones (Don't waste your time Shlomi). I'm aware that it has gone unmantained, but it's my project and I'd like to hand it off to someone who isn't going to use it as a way to jerk themselves off and those sorts with spare time are hard to find. Even without updates, I'm glad I did the timeline since even though the critics bitch that it hasn't been maintained, they didn't write it and don't have the stories I do. :) even so. The episode left me feeling again that no good deed goes unpunished which best describes perl. My own other half has bitter memories of being pumpkin which is an unfortunate, yet meaningful, tidbit. When even your most devoted think they've not spent their time as well as they'd have hoped.....

 e.

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Elaine,

thanks for your message. See below for my response.

I admit I may be self-promoting and ego-maniacal and self-centred and lots of
other stuff. However, I also care about the Perl community (and the global open
source community in general, since I'm trying not to be a tribalist), and also
agree that my own interests and those of the community at large align more
often than not. For example, http://perl-begin.org/ was primarily my endeavour,
which I have promoted and boasted of, but many people also found it a useful
resource, and it proved of utility.

The secret to deal with problematic people is not to go on a feud with them,
and decide you want nothing to do with them, but rather to acknowledge
whatever faults they have, and try to deal with them, despite that and make
the best of the situation. See: http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1747.html
(= “the Stoic road to peace of mind”). I think many parents to children will
testify that their children can be disobedient, or mischievious, or not do
their homework or their chores on time, or whatever, but they still love them
despite all that, and try to educate them in whatever way is possible.
Perfection is in imperfection.

> I'm aware that it has gone
> unmantained, but it's my project and I'd like to hand it off to someone who
> isn't going to use it as a way to jerk themselves off and those sorts with
> spare time are hard to find. Even without updates, I'm glad I did the
> timeline since even though the critics bitch that it hasn't been maintained,
> they didn't write it and don't have the stories I do. :) even so. The episode
> left me feeling again that no good deed goes unpunished which best describes
> perl. My own other half has bitter memories of being pumpkin which is an
> unfortunate, yet meaningful, tidbit. When even your most devoted think
> they've not spent their time as well as they'd have hoped.....

Seems like you are trying to protect the family's Jewels. I have the opposite
view, in which I'd rather people build upon my work and take it in all
directions, because people are more willing to read or contribute to something
that is under CC-by, CC-by-sa, etc. or other permissive or copyleft licences,
than to contribute to something that is under a much stricter licence, while
people who are nefarious (e.g: spammers) won't care even if it's
All-Rights-Reserved and proprietary.

You may wish to read about the noble and highly moral teaching and deeds of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin (though the English Wikipedia article has
become too detailed) for how to turn your enemies into friends, treat
competitors with respect and avoid silly feuds and «an-eye-for-an-eye» and «may
my soul die with philistines» bitterness. It is applicable for the software and
digital media worlds today, as much as it applied to warfare back then.

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/

Apple Inc. is Evil - http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/

When Chuck Norris uses git, he takes a coffee break after initiating every git
commit. And then he waits for the commit to finish.

[Elaine Ashton]

Shlomi you aren't the fruit of my loins nor are you, thankfully, the last person on earth. I can wait for the right person to give it to instead of the only person. If you have any more self-referencing quotes save them for someone else.

e.

[Dave Rolsky]

So ... speaking of flame wars driving people in the community away, could
you (Elaine and Shlomi) please stop this one now.


Thanks,

-dave

/*============================================================
http://VegGuide.org http://blog.urth.org
Your guide to all that's veg House Absolute(ly Pointless)
============================================================*/

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Elaine,

[risking top-posting]

I need to deal with people with personality faults on a daily basis: on IRC, on
IM, in real life, in E-mail, etc. I'm not always happy from their behaviour,
but I try to deal with it intelligently and wisely. I don't blame all of
Freenode's #perl faults on https://metacpan.org/author/MSTROUT or on
https://metacpan.org/author/APEIRON or on thrig (= our channel master) or
on Su-Shee or on popl or whoever, because while they have their faults, they
still are essentially good people, and I try to find ways to overcome their
issues as best as I can.

Similarly, I admitted that I have the personality faults that you mentioned,
but they are not insurmountable, and you can learn to cope with them instead of
blaming everything that is wrong in this world on me (which seems incredibly
silly and ridiculous when you think about it). In my entire time of
contributing to the Perl and open-source/open-content community, I was able to
make a lot of friends, and also was able turn some of my former enemies into
either friends, or at least people who agree to collaborate with me and
tolerate me.

Would you agree to try to do the same?

Here is an excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94 by Rudyard
Kipling:

<<<<
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
>>>>

And here is what Marcus Aurelius wrote
about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism :

<<<<
Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent,
treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them
through ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of
them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman
or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together...
>>>>

It's always the most effortless solution to expect the world to change
according to your whims, but that usually won't happen and will only leave you
feeling bitter and have wishful thinking and unreal fantasies, and will leave
you as helpless as you are. In the long run, it is more constructive to handle
problematic people and situations with tolerance, acceptance, rationality and
some creative thinking.

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

[SNIPPED]

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/

My Public Domain Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/

Chuck Norris is the greatest man in history. He killed all the great men who
could ever pose a competition.

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Dave,

On Sat, 9 Feb 2013 15:43:43 -0600 (CST)
Dave Rolsky <aut...@urth.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 9 Feb 2013, Elaine Ashton wrote:
>
> > Shlomi you aren't the fruit of my loins nor are you, thankfully, the
> > last person on earth. I can wait for the right person to give it to
> > instead of the only person. If you have any more self-referencing quotes
> > save them for someone else.
>
> So ... speaking of flame wars driving people in the community away, could
> you (Elaine and Shlomi) please stop this one now.
>

sure, the previous message I sent is going to be the last one from me. I
apologise if any one was offended by my opinionated posts, and I am sorry if
anyone has any insurmountable problems with my personality and online
behaviour (which I admit is far from being perfect). Thanks to all the people
for their useful and insightful posts about the original thread and the
sub-thread of encouraging females in the FOSS/free-content worlds.

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/

What Makes Software Apps High Quality - http://shlom.in/sw-quality

Flock aims to be the browser for the social web, but I found it to be the
completely anti-social browser.