Linux Format Interviews Nat

davorg on 2006-11-05T10:52:00

The December 2006 issue of UK magazine Linux Format has an interview with Nat Torkington. There's an extended version of the interview on their web site.

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I think Nat didn't get to proofread it...

jhi on 2006-11-05T15:17:21

> ... the Perl 5 'port this' list ...

Did TPF give up on Perl 5?

sri on 2006-11-05T19:27:02

Please correct me if i'm wrong but isn't TPF supposed to promote Perl?


Naturally everybody is free to think whatever they want, but when talking as a TPF representative which Nat clearly did, i think some of his statements are a bit inadequate.



I don't want to post quotes out of context so i just highlight some parts.



Linux Format: Could you tell me what your role is at the Perl foundation?


Nat Torkington: I am on the board at the Perl foundation; we oversee the activities that the executive director sets up. We advise and connect with the appropriate people where necessary.



LXF Do you get the chance to do much hacking?


NT I didn't used to. My job at O'Reilly would keep me very very busy, but this year I've started carving out more and more time to get back in. So I taught myself Ruby, and I'm loving that. I'm working my way through programming contest puzzles - some of them are arithmetic, some are graphs, some of them are pictorial, so it's just fun. Having fun with code again.



LXF So despite learning Ruby these are things that you'd still prefer to do with Perl?


NT Well, these are tools I wrote a while ago, but yes, I'd still prefer to do that using Perl. If I had to do it all over again, it would depend on whether I was doing in for speed or for fun. It would take me longer to learn how to do it in Ruby - there are things in there like CGI scripts that I haven't played with yet. Whereas I'm perfectly comfortable with that in Perl.



LXF: How close are we to a release of Perl 6?


NT: I think the joke for a while was that it would be Christmas. We're just not going to tell you which Christmas.



LXF: Does there need to be a release?


NT: So you're thinking of it as some sort of aspirational ideal - if we never release Perl 6 we'll just get people continuing to build it.



So Perl5 is nearly dead but still ok for CGIs when you don't have the time to learn Ruby. And since Perl6 will never happen anyway...



I don't expect everybody to be a marketing genius, but to me this sadly looks like a very good Ruby ad. :(

Re:Did TPF give up on Perl 5?

chromatic on 2006-11-05T22:06:51

Please correct me if i'm wrong but isn't TPF supposed to promote Perl?

Shouldn't Nat have the opportunity to talk about other things he's doing, such as working on OSCON?

Re:Did TPF give up on Perl 5?

sri on 2006-11-06T00:38:15

Absolutely, but the interview still looks like a Ruby ad to me.

Re:Did TPF give up on Perl 5?

davorg on 2006-11-06T10:36:17

Why is that a bad thing? Ruby is a nice language.

Re:Did TPF give up on Perl 5?

sigzero on 2006-11-06T13:04:58

If you state "I am on the board of The Perl Foundation and then you go on to give an ad for Ruby, I think that is bad.

It doesn't matter if Ruby is good or bad.

Re:Did TPF give up on Perl 5?

sri on 2006-11-06T13:14:41

Ruby is a very nice language indeed, i'm now considering it for my next project too.

But the point is that Nat was talking as a member of the Perl Foundation, not the Ruby Fountation.
And these kind of statements stab people in the back that still try (or tried) to promote Perl as a general purpose language,
especially for modern non-cgi web programming. :(

Re:Did TPF give up on Perl 5?

chromatic on 2006-11-06T19:19:33

But the point is that Nat was talking as a member of the Perl Foundation, not the Ruby Fountation.

That might surprise both Nat and the interviewer.

I write a fair bit of C code sometimes. I'm not and never have been a member of the Perl Foundation, but if I were, would you object to me mentioning that I write C? In the past few years, I've also written code in shell, C++, Java, Haskell, JavaScript, Python, Scheme, Visual Basic, T/SQL or something like it, SQL, Parrot Assembly, PPC assembly, and, yes, Ruby.

If someone were to interview me, and the first question mentioned Perl, would you object if I mentioned other languages in subsequent questions?

Re:Did TPF give up on Perl 5?

Alias on 2006-11-06T05:47:35

I agree. I was a little dissapointed the "I use Perl, but not when I have a choice" attitude...