Sony support uses Perl
Joel Limardo
Jan Dubois
It is kind of pointless to keep track of it, as virtually *everyone* is using Perl somewhere for something.
A few years ago somebody analyzed the download logs for ActivePerl with reverse DNS lookup and matched it against the Fortune 1000 companies domain names. I don’t remember the exact number but around 90% of them had downloaded ActivePerl at least once from an IP address owned by those companies.
Cheers,
-Jan
Andy Lester
On Aug 13, 2010, at 12:21 PM, Joel Limardo wrote:
> I think the difference here is significant. Is it enough that people and companies are using Perl and not talking about it, or should they be clear that they use it and rely upon it? Isn't it in the interests of Perl advocacy to present evidence that Perl is not just used but that it is relied upon and can handle more system administration tasks?
If you think it's important, then do something about it. Make a blog post about it. Start a website about it. Write an article for me to run on Perlbuzz.
We can talk about whether it's important or not on this list all day, but until someone does something about it, it's just talk.
xoxo,
Andy
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Joel Limardo
Joel Limardo
Andy Lester
On Aug 13, 2010, at 1:07 PM, Joel Limardo wrote:
> You've suggested that I build something, but I think that will be ultimately ineffective.
OK, so what do you want to have happen?
Jan Dubois
> I disagree that your example discounts my point -- downloading Perl is
> not the same thing as building your online support system with it and
> not only leaving the .pl extension on your pages but leaving /perl/ in
> the URI. The latter publicly says, 'hey, by the way...we use Perl and
> we rely on it for something that we consider to be fairly important'
> versus the fore which could mean virtually anything (evaluation,
> installation scripts, etc.).
Sorry, but I disagree with your additional points as well:
1) Leaving "/perl/" and ".pl" in the URL does *not* mean: "Hey, we are
using Perl to do this and are proud of it." It rather means that
they didn't bother to think about providing meaningful URLs for
their application. Exposing implementation details in an API is
a flaw, not a feature.
Of course this may be all completely justifiable, given that the
system may be just a quick hack by their support group. It is
however not a testament that Perl encourages people to build
well-designed web applications.
2) Why would 90% of those companies download Perl for evaluation,
and then not use it? Do you expect it to routinely fail in
evaluation as being unfit for actual use?
3) Why are system administration tasks (installation scripts?)
inferior to online support systems?
> I think the difference here is significant. Is it enough that people
> and companies are using Perl and not talking about it, or should they
> be clear that they use it and rely upon it? Isn't it in the
> interests of Perl advocacy to present evidence that Perl is not just
> used but that it is relied upon and can handle more system
> administration tasks?
Any organization of significant size uses all of Perl, Python, Ruby,
Java and lots of other things. It is nice to have stories about
extra-ordinary uses of languages (e.g. how a Tcl script remote-controls
the Mars Rover), but a list of companies that use any particular
mainstream technology for their bread-and-butter work isn't that
compelling IMO. Especially if we don't have any additional insight
into the scope of the application, and the challenges that had
to be overcome.
So background stories of big applications written (mostly) in Perl
would make good advocacy. Crawling the web for URLs that match
m,/perl/, or m/\.pl$/ not so much.
Cheers,
-Jan
Gabor Szabo
There is an old and out of date list on TPF wiki
https://www.socialtext.net/perl5/index.cgi?companies_using_perl
but I don't think there is a real added value in such list. As Jan pointed out
almost every company uses Perl in one form or another.
I think it would be a better form to gather companies that support
Perl in one form or other.
e.g. by letting and encouraging its employers to work on perl core or
CPAN modules
during work hours or by sponsoring various Perl events or by
sponsoring other aspects of the Perl community.
regards
Gabor
Joel Limardo
>>> "... Exposing implementation details in an API is a flaw, not a feature."
Gabor Szabo
That is the official TPF Wiki page.
Go, ask the people in Marketing Committee of The Perl Foundation.
BTW have you been reading the various Perl feeds recently?
E.g. http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/
There are a few people writing about promotion and marketing and the
similar subjects.
Gabor
http://szabgab.com/
Denny
> There is an old and out of date list on TPF wiki
>
> https://www.socialtext.net/perl5/index.cgi?companies_using_perl
>
> but I don't think there is a real added value in such list. As Jan pointed out
> almost every company uses Perl in one form or another.
I think there would be value in compiling a list of companies that are
'proud to use perl' (to borrow a website name). These companies are
actually willing to put their name next to Perl, rather than tucking it
away in their back-end support utilities, and that's worth far more to
us than a list of companies who don't even acknowledge the existence of
Perl (other than accidentally, in a URL for instance).
The London.pm list is here:
http://london.pm.org/advocacy/
A global version might be a good resource for this list to work on. I'd
be happy to host one on the Perl Is Alive server, but obviously it would
have more credibility if it were hosted on perl.org (or .com?)
Regards,
Denny
Gabor Szabo
I agree but I'd like to turn the whole thing around.
Instead of us asking permission from the companies to list them I'd
like to reach the point where they will pay in order to appear on the
list.
I believe we can do that by creating a sponsorship system or member
system for The Perl Foundation and list the sponsor/memeber companies
on the web site of TPF.
That's where my grant was heading
http://news.perlfoundation.org/2010/06/hague-grant-application-perl-e.html
but based on the feedback on that site and based on my discussion with
Karen there are quite a few people who either don't want TPF to do
that or think that I am not the right person to do this or have other
doubts about the project.
Gabor
Shlomi Fish
I agree. I think that a list of all companies that use Perl and do not admit
that would first-of-all be a problem to compile, and secondly, may be
defamation. I think it may be the "NASA uses Python" vs. "NASA uses COBOL"
syndrome - NASA (or whoever) uses a lot of stuff (including COBOL and Fortran
on old VAX machines), but is not going to boast about using, say, COBOL,
because people hate it.
What we can do is try to make Perl "hip" again (like Su-Shee noted in her
post) by building a certain unique and non-defensive Perl image, that will
make a lot of companies admit that they are using Perl.
One of the problems with Perl is that back in the old WWW fever, when early
versions of Perl 5 were practically the only sane thing to use, people wrote a
lot of Perl 4-like code in Perl 5 due to ignorance (I know I did.). Many of
these ancient "CGI" scripts matured into CPAN modules or alternatively some
popular FOSS or commercial or popular Internet-facing web-sites. However,
those that extensively use Perl are now more well-entrenched sites like
Amazon.com , livejournal.com , typepad , etc. which are very popular but not
considered "web 2.0" (bleh!) or hip enough. (And based on a vague feeling, I
think Google is starting to become well-entrenched too.). Fashions come and
later become well-entrenched and everyone still "does" them, but no one is
proud of it because they are no longer "hip".
If we can make Modern Perl 5 appeal again to younger audience, perhaps by
building an elitist image of a quirky language for "rockstars" who can
appreciate a steep learning curve, but followed by great expressivity and the
power and robustness of CPAN afterwards, and also a vibrant community, we
maybe can accelerate the Perl renaissance, and get more people to admit that
they use Perl.
For a while it seems that Vim was losing esteem among the hipsters in favour
of TextMate and similar editors, while now it may seem that it has become the
new "it" editor among them again, so technologies *can* make a perceptive
comeback, although many of them don't.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
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Joel Limardo
subject. First off, defamation is defined as making untrue statements
that injure someone's character or otherwise by making public facts
about another that, although true, are not in the public interest (for
example, if a person had a disease). Virtually any information that
can be easily obtained by the public cannot be said to be protected --
for instance, if your webserver returns pages that say 'made with
Perl' it cannot be considered defamatory to aggregate and then
retransmit this information to third parties. That would be as absurd
as suing someone for publishing a list of public accounting firms that
can be easily found in the phone book.
That being said, on certain way to avoid all legal challenges
would be, as you may have guessed, to obtain written permission
beforehand.
The goal of marketing is in part to create awareness. If you have
never heard of widget X nor of it's features and reliability you are
unlikely to use it. Human beings love to ride the bandwagon, so
sometimes telling them that their favorite sports figure drinks cherry
Coke before every game will boost sales. It is a bit of a crap shoot
to figure out what works but I can assure you that doing nothing us
like trying to start a car with a potato battery.
--
Sincerely,
Joel Limardo
Chief Software Engineer
ForwardPhase Technologies, LLC
401 N. Michigan Avenue
Suite 1200-10
Chicago, IL 60611
www.forwardphase.com
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Shlomi Fish
On Tuesday 08 Mar 2011 15:41:26 Joel Limardo wrote:
> It is (kind of) nice to see that we have not totally dropped this
> subject. First off, defamation is defined as making untrue statements
> that injure someone's character or otherwise by making public facts
> about another that, although true, are not in the public interest (for
> example, if a person had a disease).
Maybe. However, someone once told me after I said on a post to a public
mailing list that someone else told me on the phone that something about his
system was mismanaged, that spreading such rumours in public is considered
defamation.
Defamation or not, I think we should get Sony (or whoever)'s approval to say
they are using Perl, whether or not they do.
> Virtually any information that
> can be easily obtained by the public cannot be said to be protected --
> for instance, if your webserver returns pages that say 'made with
> Perl' it cannot be considered defamatory to aggregate and then
> retransmit this information to third parties. That would be as absurd
> as suing someone for publishing a list of public accounting firms that
> can be easily found in the phone book.
I see.
> That being said, on certain way to avoid all legal challenges
> would be, as you may have guessed, to obtain written permission
> beforehand.
Right.
> The goal of marketing is in part to create awareness. If you have
> never heard of widget X nor of it's features and reliability you are
> unlikely to use it. Human beings love to ride the bandwagon, so
> sometimes telling them that their favorite sports figure drinks cherry
> Coke before every game will boost sales. It is a bit of a crap shoot
> to figure out what works but I can assure you that doing nothing is
> like trying to start a car with a potato battery.
Yes, I've discussed my approach to marketing with some people on IRC
(including Su-Shee) and they told me we should instead work on preparing some
good web-based CMSes for Perl so people can install instead of WordPress or
possibly Drupal or whatever, because Perl 5 has very little usable things at
the moment. Personally, I think that the advocacy I was told that the advocacy
I've done on http://perl-begin.org/ is pretty good.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
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Rethinking CPAN - http://shlom.in/rethinking-cpan
You can never really appreciate The Gilmore Girls until you've watched it in
the original Klingon.
Joel Limardo
perlmonks, but these sites all share something in common -- they are
directed at the needs of the (prospective|current) developer. In
today's businesses there are other individuals who decide upon a
language to do development -- analysts, CTOs, CEOs, etc. These people
are not interested in how elegant perl's map function is or whether
you can do obscure things with it. Their needs are pretty
straightforward like a) what types of problems is it best suited for
(think Java which consistently marketed itself as a C++ replacement
early on) b) what is it's development cycle/structure (think Apache
Foundation) c) and, as I've been saying, who is achieving/surpassing
ROI expectations by implementing in Perl as opposed to available
alternatives.
If you don't believe that these things are important then make a point
of going to your next company/client outing and try talking to higher
level IT decision makers. I think you will see that concerns like
these have greater precedence to them than whether CMS xyz uses Perl.
In fact, perhaps it would be best to create a questionnaire for these
folks and tabulate responses.
As developers we tend to believe that when things aren't working we
need to just do more development. This is like the horse in Animal
Farm who used to say, 'I will work harder.' it is time to look beyond
that. Don't guess at what will improve the Perl community, let's take
a step back and lend a watchful eye to what has worked for others and
what the people want.