All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

why SOC?

Eric Wilhelm on 2008-03-03T08:04:38

Andy Lester reminded me that I have roughly the opposite of a tendency to state the obvious, which isn't a particularly great PR strategy.

So, what does Perl get out of participating in Summer of Code? Why should we spend all of this time and effort to mentor?

For starters, there are the community and publicity benefits:

1. New blood. My hair might still only be white on the inside, but I am getting too old to play the part of Perl's "young crowd."

2. A place in the minds of students (and academia in general.)

3. Staying in the headlines -- if we don't have a presence, we lose mindshare.

On top of that, students are competing for these internships -- so we're getting self-selected and motivated individuals writing new code. Those who enjoy teaching will understand what a great experience that can be. (And those who don't know if they enjoy teaching couldn't pick a better chance to try it.)

And those are just some generalizations. Use your imagination and your own point of view and you should be able to find a few specific reasons of your own. There have been quite a few good project ideas suggested so far on the wiki, including several for parrot.

So, for me it seems much more like a question of why wouldn't you want to help make Perl a successful participant in summer of code.

Huh?

Alias on 2008-03-03T08:45:57

Is someone suggesting that we don't do it?

Has nobody remembered that Inline::Java came out of a SoC project?

Re:Huh?

Ovid on 2008-03-03T09:22:39

I'd be surprised if anyone is suggesting that. For all of the hassle, it's a fun project with high visibility.

Re:Huh?

petdance on 2008-03-03T23:14:43

Yes, but WHY is that high visibility valuable? Just because we say "Hey, look, Perl!" doesn't make a project valuable.

Again, not stating it's not valuable, but I think we need to say WHY it's valuable.

Re: move along, nothing to see here

Eric Wilhelm on 2008-03-03T21:09:10

Is someone suggesting that we don't do it?
No. Andy was suggesting that my PR efforts need to include an explicit statement of motivations. Perhaps I should leave the PR to the experts, since all this post seems to have accomplished is to introduce the possibility for confusion.

Well anyway, if someone asks you "why?", maybe this helps, but Inline::Java is a great example.

The genesis of Inline::Java

nicholas on 2008-03-22T00:39:27

Eh? I think that there is some confusion here. Inline::Java 0.01 dates from 2001. That predates Google Summer of Code by 4 years. Is it being confused with something else?