Eric Wilhelm

• Website: scratchcomputing.com/perl/
• About: I blog in code.

Recent Actions

• Posted Open Source Summer Perl Jobs for College Students to Eric Wilhelm

  The Perl Foundation is participating in Google Summer of Code 2010 and will begin accepting applications from students on the 29th.

  If you are a college student interested in Open Source software, now is the time to get involved.

  http://co…

• Posted Google Summer of Code is coming to Eric Wilhelm

  The mentor org activities for this year's Google Summer of Code are getting underway.

  Now is the time to get involved if you are interested in mentoring or helping The Perl Foundation find students to hack on…

• Commented on Separation of Concerns
  What "code flow" is being interrupted by the pod? I have yet to see a chunk of pod in the middle of a block. I have the opposite rant: I hate having a big chunk of pod at the beginning/end...
• Commented on Why Doesn't the BBC Upgrade Their Software Often Enough?
  The budgeting issues you describe sound like "everything must be urgent" and that nothing is allocated for maintenance. Unfortunately, software doesn't punish you quite so dramatically for neglecting maintenance as e.g. an internal combustion engine. You should be treating dependencies...
• Commented on Tips on perl.org
  >"...Perl.org site - which isn't directly run by TPF by the way." Perhaps that is part of the problem. If perl.org is Perl's front face for marketing, why isn't TPF running it directly? >"As for the Camel there was much...
• Commented on Maintaining State in Perl 6 Grammars?
  I think it's technically "Perl 6", though I doubt this will help with google....
• Commented on Readable Perl
  Yes, Perl requires you to bring your own discipline (though, in any way that actually matters, it requires this no more than any other language.) But "readable" has a different definition if you only read at a first-grade level and...

Comment Threads

• :m) commented on Readable Perl

  @rjbs: "I can include a note of frustration with some apology to my future self." Yes, started to do this some time ago and it is *very* helpful. It frequently gives me this "ahh, now I remember, I hit my head against this wall before" feeling. And I feel much less dumb. :-)
  It's even a huge reward to a big investment!

  @Eric: Good point. I often think about density vs. simplicity. I have not found a final answer for me, though. And yes, I really appreciate the …

• JT Smith commented on Why Doesn't the BBC Upgrade Their Software Often Enough?

  This is the reason we created the WebGUI Runtime Environment (WRE) for WebGUI. We solve all of the incompatibilities up front for our customers, and distribute it as a whole complete, tested, working system. It's a lot of work, but it allows our customers to use up to date software and dependencies, without the fears you mention.

  To me there are basically two solutions to this problem. One is to go the way we did with the WRE. If you have a reasonably complex system the extra overhead is worth it vs complaints and nobody upgrading. The alternative is to not distribute software. Inst…

• Ovid commented on Why Doesn't the BBC Upgrade Their Software Often Enough?

  @JT: you know, I keep meaning to download WebGUI because it sounds like a very interesting product and I hear good things about it. Sounds like you've got a great setup there.