Su-Shee tag:blogs.perl.org,2009-11-03:/users/su-shee//220 2013-02-09T10:00:33Z A blog about the Perl programming language Movable Type Pro 4.38 If you talk about it, people want to buy it tag:blogs.perl.org,2013:/users/su-shee//220.4296 2013-02-09T09:43:47Z 2013-02-09T10:00:33Z This is what you get after only 2 days of Perl version numbering scheme discussions - #perl on freenode: 10:17 i have been hearing rumors about a certain Perl 7.0 10:18 is it true? Any links / confirmation about that... Su-Shee http://sushee.schreibsturm.org This is what you get after only 2 days of Perl version numbering scheme discussions - #perl on freenode:

10:17 < someone> i have been hearing rumors about a certain Perl 7.0
10:18 < someone> is it true? Any links / confirmation about that ?

10:21 < someone> last time i was in this channel (one year ago) perl 6 and perl 5 were two different entity....
10:21 < someone> is it still the case ?

10:21 < someone> does that mean perl 7 will merge those two ?

^^^^^^^^^^^ Yeah, this is probably what many people would expect - I didn't even THINK about that..

10:25 < someoneElse> when i proposed that some time ago in this channel, the reaction was "that'll only create more confusion." guess that's still true...
10:26 < someone> the fact that perl 5 and perl 6 are two different entity is confusing enough

^^^^^^^^^ Here is what the average Perl user thinks about all this...

10:27 < anotherOne> python2/3 has this issue?

Yes, that immediately comes to mind, too...

10:28 < someone> if they call it perl 2013, the adoption rate will be through the roof

^^^^^^^ and that's their expectation.


10:29 < someone> "not giving a shit" this is what i have been doing the last 3 years....
10:30 < we> would you start giving one because someone changed a version name?
10:30 < someone> if they merge perl 5/6 then yes

There you go. That's what people seem to derive from all the talk about version numbers...

10:31 < someone> so perl 6 is still just a program within a virtual machine that does nothing concrete? i mean you never hear a website powered by perl 6....

And that's the average perception...

So, now basically buzz was created successfully - and now?

What to tell people?

Every time "us common folks" get excited and hopeful for something new and shiny in Perl, the result is: "Well no, there will be no merge." and "Well no, you can't load Perl 5 modules in Rakudo yet." or "Well no, there are no X, Y and Z feature new in Perl 5 with this release."

Or do I get Moe as Perl 2013?

]]> A little help in VIM... tag:blogs.perl.org,2012:/users/su-shee//220.3093 2012-04-12T13:27:08Z 2012-04-12T15:22:47Z Su-Shee http://sushee.schreibsturm.org I'm working on an old, large codebase. (Who doesn't? ;)

Often, I'm handling modules containing around 8000 lines of code with subs (or JavaScript functions) being several hundred lines long - and I'd like to know how this monster is called I'm in right now.

So, thanks to Damian Conway's handy article series about vim scripts I created a quick and dirty hack to display the name of a sub (or a JavaScript function name) in my vim statusline:

function! FindSub()
  let subpattern = '\(sub\|function\) \w\+'
  let subline = search(subpattern, 'bnW')
  if !subline
    return 'not in sub'
  else
    return matchstr(getline(subline), subpattern)
  endif
endfunction

which gets incorporated (with line number and git branch I'm in) via set statusline:

%-10.(%l\ of\ %L%)\ \ %<%r%{FindSub()}\ \ %=%{GitBranchInfoTokens()[0]}

It's not perfect yet, but you get the idea. I'd like to match it JavaScript object literal stuff like foobar : function () { ... too.

Result:

displaysub.png

displayfunction.png

It automatically updates itself as the cursor moves into a different sub/function.

]]> Random Contest & Event Ideas tag:blogs.perl.org,2011:/users/su-shee//220.1324 2011-01-08T14:56:21Z 2011-01-08T16:11:15Z Regarding my previous post "And suddenly you're hip".... First of all: Finally accept that there are two Perls now. 5 and 6. Period. The world needs more Perl - here we have it. :) None of the two will go... Su-Shee http://sushee.schreibsturm.org Regarding my previous post "And suddenly you're hip"....

First of all: Finally accept that there are two Perls now. 5 and 6. Period. The world needs more Perl - here we have it. :) None of the two will go away. That's a good thing.

None of the following is new, but my suggestion would be to do it more in sync and at the same time and as a group to create a more event-style *cough* collective experience *cough* (think GSoC). It might also bring back people who have abadoned Perl but still keep an eye on the community. Considering how people sometimes talk about Perl on reddit or in Hackernews threads I bet some of them just need a little nudge to come back. (Many have never left in their heart.. *sniff* :)

  • Pretty Perl Contest - one task coded as pretty, tidy, neat and aesthetically pleasing as possible. Idea: Make very clear by example that the old days of ugly Perl are over and long gone. We are NOT a write once language. Period. (Make it 5 and 6 to show and illustrate different Perl styles.)
  • Perl Module Improvement Month - get the lead developers of the 10 - 20 - 30 most important modules together, let them tell how and where they would need help, improvements, docs and patches and let "the community" actually send it in. Gain quality, young padawans and publicity all in one. Perl 6 does something along those lines with assigning this month's task to improve Perl 6.
  • Perl Binding Updating Month - make one of those collective hackathons an event which also works as a group thing and makes publicity very easy.
  • Moose-based and Perl 6 OO Design Pattern Wiki Update - I loved the idea, but several code examples are outdated and aren't done that way anymore. Idea: Teaching Perl via typical teaching subjects by example spreads the language _and_ knowledge. Be the first address and leading authority for modern OO concepts like roles and traits.
  • Write Learning you a Perl (Perl 6) for great good :)
  • Have one of those shiny online REPLs to experiment. As apeiron rightly noted, CPAN is "programming Perl" - so add the possibility to load modules on the fly and experiment with them. (Well, not ALL of them.. ;) Perl 6 already has one.
  • Write something nice and meaningful about a project - developer - module you really hate. Idea: This internal community bitching really is counterproductive. Please hug now.
  • (And now you're going to stone me .. ;) Adopt a PHP developer - help some PHP bloke to switch to Perl and make him stick with it. ;) Idea: Take back the Web. (Man, I really hate having lost it in the first place.. )
  • Everyone who has a Perl job: Talk to your company and get the permission to write a "we use Perl because..." piece. Actually write it. Idea: Show and tell that Perl _is_ used (besides the usal suspects). Collect _all_ of them on a central webpage, including company links to the "Jobs" section.
  • Continue with the advent calendars - I really _love_ them and I read all of them. RJBS: Yours was _amazing_. Maybe add a "40 days of Perl" before Easter. :) (Or make it like the extremely cool horror movie 30 days of night..:) Idea: Celebrate Perl by date - it usally leads to concentrated effort and supports each other.
  • Fill the gap month - Make a "Perl modules missing" list - and make it a month to actually work on filling the gap together. Perl 6 could really do with some more modules as well.
  • Actually make Perl screencasts... *sigh* :)
  • Ease of Perl month - take a couple of common tasks and improve the perl-related part to make it easier, smoother, nicer to handle/install/use/deploy.
  • Perl Begging - relate to each other more - assign/ask for/beg projects and modules and developers you think could do nice stuff to actually do it. Make it a site along the lines "What your Perl fanboy/groupie wants from YOU in 2011"
  • Make nice shirts. Some that I can actually wear in public. ;) I'd like a Perl Regex Mug, too.
  • Tweet more about what you've done this day/week/months in terms of Perl.
  • Ignorance is bliss Perl zen. Adopt a calm posture in the face of idiots still considering Perl a write-once language. Silently paste a link to pretty and tidy Perl code until they give up. ;) Also compile a list of "Pretty Perl to learn from" to actually _spread_ the notion of style and code aesthetics in Perl. I like Mojolicious' code style very much for example.

And yes, I will do my part and not just bitch in public. ;)

]]> And suddenly, you're hip tag:blogs.perl.org,2011:/users/su-shee//220.1322 2011-01-08T10:43:32Z 2011-01-08T16:13:14Z Addition: I've made a more detailed list of event ideas. This Perl marketing thing you know.. I'm really thinking about it every day. I've always wondered how those mechanism of "being THE it-language" or "the tool the cool kids use... Su-Shee http://sushee.schreibsturm.org Addition: I've made a more detailed list of event ideas.

This Perl marketing thing you know.. I'm really thinking about it every day. I've always wondered how those mechanism of "being THE it-language" or "the tool the cool kids use these days" or "success" in terms of "spreading everywhere" really works.

I've started with Linux in 1995 in Germany and I remember for example how the increasing database support on Linux was celebrated ".. and now XY is available under Linux" and how the success of Linux went hand in hand with the raising success of the Internet and the Web of course. Those were fascinating times.

Over the years I've done something else but Perl but then I went back at a point when I felt "Web is cool again" - and then I had to realize that PHP basically took over the Web. Bad. That's abolutely not what I wanted to spend my time on - coding PHP. So of course I had to notice Ruby.

And this is where things get really interesting. (Yes, this posting HAS a point.;)

As with iPhones and Macs, the recognition and publicity and the influence of Ruby doesn't really say _anything_ about the REAL numbers of users, installation bases, hosts, projects and so on which actually use it. The iPhone isn't the highest sold smartphone. A Mac isn't the most often bought computer. Ruby is on the rise - but it's not the most commonly used language - not even in Web context.

None the less: It surely feels that way.

(If you can't really relate to the stylish side of marketing, you might have a better feel for how the selling of Java as THE enterprise thing did work and how much influence it gained - there is really no denying in its success along the enterprise lines. )


So, (and here's the first point of the posting ;) recently I've noticed that Vim "somehow" (and that will be the real point of this posting ;) became the new hip shiny programming editor.

Sure, Vim is around for a long time, it's quite common and everyone using it (like me) basically every since it existed suddenly wakes up and thinks "Err, yeah well of course Vim is a really nice programming editor, man - why do you think we use it?!" - but there's more to it.

I see (especially in 2010) the following things popping up all over our tiny world of Internet folks:

  • Screencasts how to use Vim. Often Mac users make them so they really look nice - and it really doesn't matter wether I personally think if a screencast of something you type makes any sense at all - it sells and people love it and really watch those things.

  • More documentation for beginners. Often written in a style taking the unixoid, hardcore user background out of Vim and selling it as the new "you just have to use this" thing. Nicely styled, not too long, but also not too short and certainly in a different style than the usal university computer science lab Vim short reference you find everywhere ever since people had to learn Vi.

  • Selling the steep learning curve as something what earns you Rockstar- and Ninja-credit in your community (I'm assuming you're familiar with all this Rockstar/Ninja meme...)

  • Leading to an image of Vim basically saying: "Sorry mate if you don't know Vim - that's really not cool." (We old beards (me: bitches) to paraphrase Zed Shaw sold it as "It's basic knowledge, because you might need it if you administrate some Unix somewhere..") While many people might be sold via the pragmatic notion of "It's a useful thing to know, you'll encounter it in plenty of your upcoming professional scenarios", others drool like Pavlov's dog when it comes to the cool and hip of things.

  • On top of that, plenty of confessional blog postings along the lines of "How I abandoned TextMate and learned to love Vim" popped up and again sold Vim as OMGWTFHOWCOOLISTHISSHIT. Somehow, Vim gets you laid these days - that's basically the overall message.

  • The "tone of voice" is totally different when it comes to the new shiny tutorials selling Vim - you'll find a more casual, more playful style of documentation, but you'll also find plenty of subtle (and not so subtle) phrases making YOU - the user - the Rockstar and Ninja (and where btw is A NICE HIP FEMALE PHRASE I COULD PRINT ON A SHIRT? ;) if he just learns one more of those weird Vim commands.

  • This leads to more themes (think: Perl REPL with colors - sure as hell pretty cool), more plugins (Perl certainly covered that via CPAN ;), more user-centered plugins which in itself leads to more recognition, more influence and more publicity, because people post, write and screencast about those extensions of the new it-editor all over again - all in a voice of "You can have this cool shit, too - just use Vim." (Noone cares wether Emacs can do X or Y even longer, better and with a better integration at this point, btw...)

  • All this stuff is published on central hubs of users and programmers - Hackernews, Reddit, influential blogs, twittered, younameit.

  • It leads to competitions and contests sold as "events" basically. You might already know those "1k JavaScript" competitions or "Hack this web app on a weekend" contests and the like - Vim recently got its own competition with a shiny hipster website: http://vimgolf.com/ "Real vim ninjas count every keystroke" (I'm not making this up.) Please also notice the improved, polished Vim-Logo in the upper left corner.

So, what does this tell us in the Perl community?

  • "We" don't really do screencasts. Pragmatically "we" think it's not really useful to make a movie of something you type in. WRONG.

  • "We" don't make us Ninjas or Rockstars - we still have the notion of "Monks". You might think this is stupid - on a cultural level you're basically comparing living the boheme with celebacy - guess what speaks to
    people?

  • "We" don't really sell Perl as OMGCOOLSHIT. "We" argue pragmatically about power, environment, stability, backwards compatibility, CPAN and so on. "We" don't have buttons with I ♥CPAN or make a CPAN movie.

  • In September, a european JavaScript conference took place in Berlin, where I live. It was sold out 3 months before. It took place in a nice and shiny location. It had a really nice website. The video quality... Perl conferences take place in university buildings. Meh.

  • "We" don't get mentioned anywhere anymore. I've disabled all my Perl related blogs/news stuff for a while and read only "meta" blogs (Web, Programming and so on) - "we" are literally invisible to the bigger public, not matter how much CPAN grows and no matter how much #perl is the biggest IRC channel on freenode.

  • "We" aren't googable.

  • "We" don't spread in public. We open one relatively closed community thing after another which makes it convenient to get ALL of the Perl related stuff - but the central hubs we create don't spread. So it's a "all or nothing" thing with Perl.

  • "We" don't make a cool event out of every single piece of code we're writing - we don't have events like "The Perl Newbie Doc Writing Week" or the "Perl Weekend Module Improvement Contest" or the "Worldwide Perl Website Cleanup Month" or anything like it. We have so much really really really cool shit - I'm amazed every week by certain projects and modules - and we keep it to ourselves. WHAT GOOD IS OWNING A PICASSO (ok, a PORSCHE ;) IF YOU DONT SHOW IT OFF? ;)

  • "We" don't sell our amazing range of CPAN modules as cool shit. We tend to argue that Execel modules are a powerful thing and are really stable and support plenty of Excel tasks - we don't do Perl along the lines of "Man, take this boredom out of converting stuff to Excel by using this cool amazing Excel module from CPAN - you also get 4 steak knives for free" and add a satirical screencast on top with the developer dressed as in one of those weird tv selling shows.

So, the lesson I learned in 2010: Becoming the new it-girl err editor/tools/language has absolutely nothing to do with how you look like today - it's all about how you present yourself.

Noone in his/her right mind for example would consider Vim's builtin scripting language as something "nice" or "elegant" or would think that Vim has "ease of use" (though there is a concept of usability behind vi - and it surely has nothing to do with onMouseOvers...) - we all know it for its power and flexibility.

As we do Perl.

Oh, and if you think I'm totally crazy: Then please watch the rise of Erlang thanks to CouchDB. (I mean ERLANG?! Hello?! :) Have you taken a look into "Learn you some Erlang for great good" with this cute-cutsy drawing? Same for "Learn you a Haskell for great good" (Even more HELLO?! ;)

See here: http://learnyouahaskell.com/ and http://learnyousomeerlang.com/

]]> Pretty Perl tag:blogs.perl.org,2010:/users/su-shee//220.219 2010-01-31T14:22:13Z 2010-01-31T14:42:13Z Contrary to popular belief and utter media ignorance, Perl doesn't just offer several powerful web frameworks (I'm totally in love with Sebastian Riedel's Mojo), it also has extremely powerful and underestimated GUI and graphic's bindings. Recently I toyed a little... Su-Shee http://sushee.schreibsturm.org Contrary to popular belief and utter media ignorance, Perl doesn't just offer several powerful web frameworks (I'm totally in love with Sebastian Riedel's Mojo), it also has extremely powerful and underestimated GUI and graphic's bindings. Recently I toyed a little with the java-based "Processing" and while I was cursing several Java classes I was somehow too stupid to get up and running, I realized that I could have all the shiny and pretty shapes and animations in Perl the easy way. (What's missing is the overall well-rounded integration of Pretty Perl, sugarcoated with a nice GUI.)

Here's a little round-up of Perl all being pretty:

A reminder to everyone who forgot: The extremely powerful and flexible Image Magick still comes with the Perl API Perl Magick . Use it. If you need inspiration what to do with all the bitmap goodness, check out Mac-based "Pixelmator" which is a showcase of adding a GUI to Image Magick and make it an extremely impressive bitmap editor. (Why didn't the Open Source world do it with Gtk?)

Which leads us to the most impressive work the GtkPerl team has done over the years. Gtk2Perl is a must-install.

Another family member of GtkPerl is Cairo, the SVG library which also can produce PDF output and draw pretty things. ;)

Everyone wanting a basic browser written in Perl to get a look on Webkit-based rendering, can install Gtk2::WebKit which is a fully fledged Webkit view. If you have Flash installed correctly, it even does Flash out of the box. (I put a little example in my pretty Perl github)


gtkperlwekbit.png


If you're more of a KDE-kind-of-person: Yes, there is someone working on a new QtPerl version to support Qt/KDE 4.x.

Another really impressive library is "Clutter". Based on OpenGL and Cairo and that way bringing together the best of all worlds, Clutter can act as a canvas to be used in canvas-lacking Gtk. The Clutter module awaits your download.

While we're at it: Yes, there are Perl bindings to OpenGL - a project named POGL. If you're interested in the usal speed competitions between programming languages, read the POGL benchmark carefully. POGL is also available on CPAN

Another interesting library is libaosd which essentially allows no-fuss drawing directly on the screen. Of course, there's a X11::Aosd module on CPAN.


libaosdperl.png


If you need the average run-of-the-mill canvas to use with Gtk, today's choice  (besides Clutter) is the Goo::Canvas module on CPAN.

Last, but not least - if you're planning to re-write OLPC's "Sugar" desktop in Perl, you'll have to get the X11 modules on CPAN There's the traditional X11::Protocol and I just found a new X11::Xlib module

If you are more into classics: Yes, TkPerl still exists.

And I totally forgot the Wx bindings for Perl which many people prefer over native widget sets.

]]>