Shlomi Fish

• Website: www.shlomifish.org/
• About: An Israeli software developer, essayist, and writer, and an enthusiast of open/free software and cultural works. I've been working with Perl since 1996.

Recent Actions

• Commented on Perl and self flagellation...
  You should have used File::Spec->no_upwards and File::Spec->catfile(...) here instead of the /^[^.]/ regular expression which will miss other directories that start with a period as well as the "/" which is not portable. Also look at File-Slurp and IO-All....
• Commented on The "sky" command-line application and other Recent hacktivity
  Toby: blogs.perl.org ate my previous comment, so I'm writing it again. Regarding that site, I cannot fully use it because I inherited some "Changes" from other projects, which use a different format, but I'll try. You are right that...
• Posted The "sky" command-line application and other Recent hacktivity to Shlomi Fish
  If you have a good web hosting, you may have run into a pattern, where you are uploading files to it for other people to download and need to find the URL where they were uploaded to. Thing is - recalling the exact Rsync (= a file uploader) comman…
• Posted Copied from Slashdot.org: "Heroic people make any job they take awesome." to Shlomi Fish
  First of all, I have written my recent hacktivity log over on my new dreamwidth.org blog, and I am not posting it here, because it involves a lot of non-code hacktivity, which I expect to do quite a lot more of from now.

  That put asi…

• Posted XML-Grammar-Screenplay: Alternative Format for Hollywood Screenplays to Shlomi Fish
  A short time after I posted a message about XML-Grammar-Screenplay to a Perl forum, a Perl enthusiast sent me a message reading like that:

  I would think that a proper screenplay grammar would…

• Commented on Whats wrong with the Perl Community?
  Hi, Just my two cents, in addition to what everyone here said: I think we can derive a lot of value from people who say negative things (even if it's destructive criticism), because it may tell us where we...
• Posted ANN: My Transition From Software Developer to Writer/Entertainer/Amateur Philosopher/Internet Celebrity to Shlomi Fish
  I'd like to make an announcement: after some serious thought, I decided that from now on, being a software developer (which I am not too bad at) will only be the means (but the absolutely necessary ones) to me being a writer / entertainer / philosopher / Internet celebrity (a little bit of all t…
• Posted Essay: "Just write the God-damn tests, motherfucker!" to Shlomi Fish
  (I originally wrote this in a post to qa@perl.org, and I apologise for the profanity in the title, but I felt it is needed in this case.)

  So why am I writing this? I used to feel guilty about not being conscious…

• Commented on I would like to buy a Hailo
  What brian is telling is strange. As far as I know, proprietary software companies such as Microsoft, sell their software with a big “no warranty” disclaimer in all-capital letters in their licences, which prevents you from effectively suing them,...
• Commented on Perlybook updates
  Just wanted to note that Perlybook seems like a commendable and useful project, and thanks for putting the source under the Artistic 2.0 licence, which is open source and supersedes the old and lacking “Same terms as perl”. I'm...
• Posted Count-up to 100 CPAN Distributions: Quality *as well as* Quantity to Shlomi Fish
  Going over the previous count-ups to 100 CPAN distributions in this blog, I feel I have been carried away: I tried to release a lot of new distributions to the CPAN, while neglecting all the existing distributions I have, and not tending to their pending problems and their lack of software qu…
• Commented on Count-up to 100 CPAN Distributions: Test-XML-Ordered, SDLx-Betweener, and more
  Replying to myself, I would like to note that the Marpa scanless interface was announced, so it's one less reason for me not to use it. Thanks!...
• Commented on Count-up to 100 CPAN Distributions: Test-XML-Ordered, SDLx-Betweener, and more
  Hi Jakub, thanks for your comment. I should note that in general, I have yet to study Marpa extensively (though I looked into it a bit). One thing I dislike about it is that it still requires a separate...
• Commented on Adding Macros to Excel::Writer::XLSX
  Sounds great, thanks. I recall having some fun coding custom macros and functions in Visual Basic for Apps on Excel. BTW, you misspelled "existing" as "exiting", and may wish to correct it. Thanks, and happy Hanukkah....
• Posted Count-up to 100 CPAN Distributions: Test-XML-Ordered, SDLx-Betweener, and more to Shlomi Fish
  Well, it's no longer a secret that I'm craving to join the "100 CPAN Distributions Club" by releasing some code that is hopefully not too useless. Here I would like to blog about the two new additions to my CPAN page which are the 83rd and 84th di…
• Commented on Three Command-Line Utilities
  Hi Steven, OK, the new release of App-Countdown, supports timeouts such as 2m or 1.5h or whatever (in input - not in output yet - I have yet to determine if and when I should display the minutes and...
• Commented on Three Command-Line Utilities
  Hi Alexey, reminder looks interesting. I have packaged it for Mageia (= Linux distribution) already and will take a further look. Its tk interface - "tkreminder" appears to be confusing, but maybe I can figure out the command line...
• Commented on Three Command-Line Utilities
  Hi Steven, thanks for your comment. I made App::Countdown object oriented, because I'm making almost all of my code object oriented, because I don't know when it will outgrow its original design, and then I may have to break...
• Posted Three Command-Line Utilities to Shlomi Fish
  So, November is NaNoWriMo ("National Novel Writing Month"), and I was hoping to get some serious writing done (instead of coding), but I kept being distracted with coding and random writing in various Internet forums. Well, …
• Commented on Please Publish Perl Events on the LWN.net Calendar
  daxim gave the following links in addition: http://www.theperlreview.com/community_calendar (contact: brian d foy) http://www.yapceurope.org/events/timeline.html (contact: #act mongueurs) https://grical.org/ (contact: Sven Guckes) http://www.heise.de/open/veranstaltungskalender/ (for the German speaking audience)...
• Posted Please Publish Perl Events on the LWN.net Calendar to Shlomi Fish
  As I read last week's LWN.net's Announcement Page (LWN.net is a news site for open-source-related news, formerly standing for "Linux Weekly News"), I noticed that there were few if any Perl events featured in its upcoming events calendar. However, th…
• Commented on Alien::Base Beta Release!
  Thanks for your effort! The three modules build, test and install cleanly on Mageia Linux 3/Cauldron. Given the time and the motivation, I can test it on other systems I have on VirtualBox VMs. Should I?...
• Commented on My Experience with Inline::C
  petdance: I'm glad....
• Posted Tech Tip: Overriding the C compiler with ExtUtils::MakeMaker to Shlomi Fish
  In order to override the C compiler with ExtUtils::MakeMaker, one can do something like:

  perl Makefile.PL CC=/usr/bin/clang
  

  Which will make the "CC" variable in the generated makefile be set to /usr/bin/clang instead of the default. Apparently, setting the CC…

• Posted Grant for Improving the Perl Debugger + New CPAN Distributions to Shlomi Fish
  First of all, I am glad to announce that the Perl Foundation grant committee has accepted my grant proposal for adding tests and refactoring the built-in perl debugger. Here is ="http://news.perlfound…
• Commented on The goodness of testing
  I enjoyed reading your post, but I don't see why what you are saying is controversial (at least not to people with significant experience in automated testing). I've written a little about it on my Perl for Newbies talks as...
• Commented on What's new on the Perl Beginners' Site
  Hi Andy, I'm sorry for the late response, but I was not notified of posting this comment for some reason. Anyway, you're welcome....
• Posted Tech Tip: How to Package and Maintain CPAN Distributions in Mageia to Shlomi Fish
  Mageia Linux is an RPM-based Linux distribution, whose repositories contain over 3,000 CPAN packages, and part of the reason why it has so many is because Jerome Q…
• Commented on Perl Coding for the Win
  Welcome to blogs.perl.org!...
• Posted Announcement: the App-Notifier CPAN Distributions to Shlomi Fish
  I would like to announce two new CPAN distributions of mine: App-Notifier-Service and App-Notifier-Client. These are derived from a few simplistic scripts I've written i…

Comment Threads

• David Shultz commented on Perl and self flagellation...

  That is very sad indeed, you seem to have had a different view back in 2011 when responding to a post by chromatic about civility (or a lack there of) in the Perl community. I encourage you to come back to the fold of treating people with respect regardless of their level of "desire to learn", it seems to me deciding how to treat someone else based on the desire to learn might say more about you then then other person.

• David Shultz commented on Perl and self flagellation...

  Very well spoken, thank you for your input.

• Zak B. Elep commented on Perl and self flagellation...

  Modern Perl may be academic, but that's exactly what makes it interesting: "academic" solutions bring an altogether other perspective on solving problems. It is an expression of TMTOWDI, something that ought to be welcomed rather than scorned. I'd rather see the language and its thinking process grow fruitful in novel academic solutions than stagnate in congruent practicality.

• vsespb commented on Perl and self flagellation...

  > Database code written with DBIx::Class is easier to understand that the equivalent code written using DBI and raw SQL.
  It's true only for some cases. ORM has advantages and disadvantages, for complex applications plain SQL is
  easier (and just cannot be combined with ORM)

  
  > Web applications written in Catalyst, Dancer or Mojolicious are easier to maintain that the equivalent code written as a series of CGI programs

  It's not true when you're writing something complex, non standard. Actually when you writing something else than "classic" website.
  

• confuseAcat commented on Perl and self flagellation...

  I have a feeling that this thread is completely missing the point. This is not about Moo/Moose/Mouse code being easy to maintain, not about Plack apps being easier to deploy. This is about the stuff I'd be discussing with my grandfather would he still be alive: "But I don't need this internet thing.", "Writing letters is so much easier".

  People too lazy to learn new things, people afraid of change, will come up with all sorts of excuses and explanations. I think this thread gives perfect examples. Saying "I don't need Moose in my day-to-day work" is one thing, but a claim like "Moder…