I'm sure most of you are familiar with the debates which have consumed the Perl community lately. I really don't want to get into that other than to say that supporters on all sides have valid reasons for their views and everyone has something to contribute. Rather than speculate on what some problems are -- oh, and believe me, I can! -- I think what's more important is to figure out how to obtain information relevant to these considerations. In fact, I have several "perceptions" I think need to be better understood.
How did these perceptions arise? What is the source of them? Are people merely parroting what they've heard or do they have first-hand experience? What would it take to change people's minds?
These perceptions are a few things I hear constantly from those outside of Perl. Inside of Perl, we have different perceptions, but outside of Perl, I hear wildly different stories. Many of those stories don't match my experiences (see item #6 above), but in order to understand where the perception problem is coming from, it would be useful to better understand why people have these ideas (rather than play "pin the tail on the scape goat").
What I am thinking would be useful is for someone with some expertise in creating surveys to figure out a way to start collecting this information. So when I created the testing survey, there was a lot of fascinating information, but given my lack of expertise in creating surveys, it was rather limited (brian d foy helped quite a bit in expanding that survey beyond my initial questions).
I'm very keen on understanding the perceptions that programmers and organizations have about Perl. If we identify strong, persistent currents in thought, that might give us a clue as to what a good way forward would be. A lot of people are making blanket assertions about what Perl needs for the future. Some are quite reasonable (how do we tighten up the P5P development process), but many are based on hunches (Perl definitely needs to do X!!!).
Anyone interested in picking up this gauntlet and trying to better understand what we need to do? (This would involve potentially surveying companies in addition to individuals).
I think unless someone (TPF?) hires a professional research firm, any "survey" about this is going to have limited value. To get at not just *what* the perceptions are but *why*, I think you'll need a properly designed survey and true random sampling of IT professionals.
-- dagolden
The perl survey
singingfish on 2009-07-26T23:12:51
Indeed it is.
I think I'm going to run some focus groups for interested people on IRC to try to nut this out a bit.Re:The perl survey
singingfish on 2009-07-26T23:14:42
err that would be my tpf grant, which I expect to be complete by the end of this year.
I have some experience of designing and administering questionnaires and analysing questionnaire data, both from my academic studies and in my current and previous jobs, and this is why I agree with dagolden that we need to enlist the services of a PR firm specialising in reputation analysis. I seem to recall seeing a talk at a London.pm workshop/tech meeting about how a company[1] was using Perl/NLP techniques to do just that for major corporate brands, but purely on a statistical level like brandwatch.net does. Since our question is not just what people think but also why, I think we'd also need to conduct field research at universities, tech conferences/meetings and at companies across several countries, so I can't imagine this research would be quick or cheap.
That said if this isn't possible, and the majority of the community is willing to accept the caveats and problems with an enthusiastic, amateur approach, I'm willing to help out.
[1] I can't for the life of me remember its name and I've looked through the schedules to no avail.
If you come up with the questions, I'm happy to run it on the same codebase for the YAPC Conference Surveys, which runs on the Birmingham.pm survey. Just needs a YAML file to drive the questionnaire
Re:Survey Server
barbie on 2009-07-24T20:01:37
s/Birmingham.pm survey/Birmingham.pm surver/;
Re:Survey Server
barbie on 2009-07-24T20:02:41
Thank gwad it's Friday night! You know what I mean
;) Re:Survey Server
Ovid on 2009-07-25T07:26:47
Heh
:)
I don't think companies invest in finding out why is their perception bad. They invest in changing it.
I think Perl needs someone with a marketing hat. Someone who has this as a paid job. One of the first things she should do is to find out what is really the perception of people from the outside and how to change it?
AFAIK the TPF grant of Richard Dice does not cover this but I hope we will be able to hire and finance someone who can do this.
Re:Perception is Reality
ziggy on 2009-07-25T18:14:43
Steve Yegge covered these points at OSCon a few years back.
The root problem is that geeks don't do marketing well, don't respect marketing, even when marketing is the most important thing we can do for ourselves and our projects. (It's been a while since I listened to his talk, so my memory is fuzzy here.)
One of the interesting points he made is that GTE (the phone company) had a very bad reputation among its customers and in its service area. They conducted a poll to see what it would take to improve their reputation and brand perception, how long it would take, and how much it would cost. As Steve tells it, if GTE had absolutely stellar performance from this day forward until the end of time, and an unlimited marketing budget to improve perception of the brand, it would take 25 years (or about a generation) to lose its bad brand perception.
So they chose to take a different path: change the name of the company to Verizon, something that had no embedded brand perception to work against.
"Perl" now has 20+ years of compounded bad perception in the parts of the tech community that cares about it. "Perl 6" has had about half as much time being badly received by the same group. If there were an infinite budget for marketing campaigns and PR surveys, those opinions won't change easily.
Re:Perception is Reality
gabor on 2009-07-25T18:20:51
Interesting point.I wrote a bit more on my blog about Perception is Reality but basically you responded to that one too.
Re:Perception is Reality
Ovid on 2009-07-26T08:08:41
Great blog entry. Loved the Nescafé points.
Re:Perception is Reality
Ovid on 2009-07-26T08:11:49
I find this really interesting. If Perl's PR is so bad that we can't pull out of it, then I guess always referring to Perl 6 as Rakudo (assuming that's the implementation you use) could be a great thing.
That being said, I'm not a defeatist and I don't believe Perl's PR problems are insurmountable. The Perl community's resistance to PR, however, might be, thus making this a moot point.
Re:Perception is Reality
chromatic on 2009-07-26T08:57:21
The Perl community's resistance to PR....
Isn't that odd? Someone recently called me a marketer during a disagreement, and the context suggested the other person meant it as an insult.
Re:Perception is Reality
rafael on 2009-07-26T20:35:55
Marketing should help and sustain technical development, not go against it.
Re:Perception is Reality
chromatic on 2009-07-26T22:04:32
You say "marketing". I call it describing a very real, very large pachyderm which has taken adverse possession of the room. We will never agree on a term.
However, I think we can both agree that marketing activities should reflect reality. That's why I base my conclusions on (and refer to) publicly accessible raw data, such as timelines, release dates, bug reports, patch submissions, commit logs, documentation, and mailing lists are all public information. Anyone who wants to review that data in its original context can do so.
Re:Perception is Reality
rafael on 2009-07-27T09:42:08
You systematically misrepresent the problems that the Perl 5 development has, and invent new ones. You propose technical solutions that show a total lack of understanding of what is a large user base for Perl 5. You refuse to listen to people who actually work on Perl 5. You arrogantly think that if most people on P5P think you're wrong, that's because most of P5P is wrong. Perl needs PR, but _your_ kind of PR is certainly hurting Perl a lot.
Re:Perception is Reality
chromatic on 2009-07-27T10:21:06
I highly recommend the Notes from the Perl 5 BOF at OSCON -- in particular those sentences which mention the words "blead" and "maint".
I was not present at the meeting, yet the discussion seems very familiar. Would you make the same criticism of the participants?
Re:Perception is Reality
rafael on 2009-07-27T12:40:46
As Dave Mitchell said on P5P, a list of hasty notes taken during a discussion among a non-representative group of mostly irregular porters was bound to ignore the most important problems. Yet I effectively recognize many concerns which I already mentioned (see for example the end of http://consttype.blogspot.com/2009/07/job-of-pumpking.html ) and I largely agree with the general line of thought. Which has little in common with yours, as explained on modernperlbooks. The BOF discussed about release management and volunteer herding; they didn't propose to break backwards compatibility, or introduce syntactic sugar without semantics for its pure fashionable value; nor did they invent imaginary problems.
I note that you completely failed to address the numerous flaws I pointed in your reasoning. Yet you continue to stick to your position. Don't misquote me: I didn't called you a marketer. What you're doing not real marketing, this is using marketing slogans to help oneself ignoring the reality, and that's what I said.
You're turning into a Dilbert character -- how is it possible to continue taking you seriously now ?
Re:Perception is Reality
chromatic on 2009-07-27T18:39:36
The BOF discussed about release management and volunteer herding; they didn't propose to break backwards compatibility,
That's only technically true:
Chip: Once we've defined a deprecation cycle, we define breakage of compatibility.
Don't misquote me: I didn't called you a marketer.
You're right. I apologize. You have called me a marketdroid ; I suppose the suffix is of vital importance. The same post implies I'm a propagandist, that I'm anti-p5p, and called me hysterical and deaf to criticism. You've also accused me of pure FUD, implied that I'm engaging in slander and defamation in a conspiracy with Andy Lester, and speculated that I deliberately attempt to destroy the image of p5p. You've called my arguments lies and suggested that people who agree with me are "less experienced".
You've deleted other things you've written about me publicly after people have objected.
Do you believe that villainizing people who disagree with you is an effective mechanism for healthy debate?
I fixed a bug in Perl 5 this morning three hours after the report arrived. Have I earned the right to write about my opinions on Perl 5's development process yet?
Re:Perception is Reality
rafael on 2009-07-27T20:36:17
I didn't delete anything except from my own initiative (and you know that), and for the rest I plaid guilty: what you're doing on modernperlbooks is disinformation and FUD. I note that it's Chip's turn to be quoted out of context. And now you're speaking about healthy debate, while I resigned in disgust from P5P after months of trying to avoid responding to your attacks. It would have been wiser to ignore you completely. Which I shall do from now on, since you still refuse to understand technical arguments.
And no, fixing an off by one error does not earn you the right to pour garbage continuously on P5P. Sorry.
Re:Perception is Reality
TomDeGisi on 2009-07-27T22:19:41
I'm nobody. Just an old (49) programmer who has spent more time using Java than Perl, but who wishes it were the reverse. Perl has nearly been removed as a development language where I work. That's sad, because Perl is exciting and interesting. I'm looking forward to creating new things using Perl 6 and I'm excited by the changes to Perl 5. I do work on some DarkPAN code. I'd like to move beyond Third Edition Camel and first edition cookbook when I do so. I've found chromatic's writing helpful for that. I've never posted anything on CPAN, or patched Perl. I just try to read alot about it. So I guess I'm not allowed to comment on the Perl development process at all.
I have been watching this debate. Rafael, when you make an argument for your position it is generally well reasoned and well supported. But when you write about chromatic's arguments you spout ridiculous hyperbole like this, "give you the right to pour garbage continuously on P5P". That doesn't match reality from where I sit at all. Neither did anything else you wrote above. Is there somewhere other than Modern Perl Books, Planet Perl, Planet Perl Iron Man and Use Perl where chromatic has written this disinformation and FUD? Strong arguments about release schedules and deprecation are not disinformation and FUD.
You know, I never heard of you until recently, because I mainly learned about Perl through Perl.com. But I did know chromatic from all his good work there. (Not to bring up old wounds.) I think it odd that you think you have the right to mischaracterize his efforts for Perl as miniscule, just because yours are herculean. My efforts for Perl are miniscule. His? Not so much.
Luckily, having spent lots of time arguing on the internet, I am very well qualified to critique the way you argue, if not how you develop software.
Yours,
3om
Tom DeGisi
I'm finding it interesting doing Ruby fulltime right now. The PR says Ruby is fantastically effective and time saving, etc.
On actually using it and becoming proficient, I'm finding it's less efficient to write. I think I'm concluding that a competent Perl programmer ought to have better, less buggy code with more features than a Ruby programmer. I don't do Rails though.
Right now, it seems to be coming down to things like Perl's better error detection, a built-up toolchain, and CPAN's metadata.
I mention this as a potentially interesting example of PR vs reality.
Re:Scale
chromatic on 2009-07-27T05:12:03
I've also heard it from people who believe that the only way to write web server programs in Perl is with CGI.
there is also a ted talk on it.
my pov
web == crack cocaine.[[sites have a short life span, people keep visiting them again and again]]
most of the gangs[[production && distribution]] take control of the market by bruteforce. they do this with the money and guns and potraying the other gangs as pu*****.
more importantly they attract the new members by showing this strong integrity[[we wil take care of you]] and the sexy lifestyle like cars, jewelry, blah blah blah and sometimes by making the new guys some how debted to them[[like giving him a loan and stealing from him, gambling, drugs]].
you can stretch the analogies pretty far.
=====
where does perl fit into all this ??
perl has always been an anarchic society and by that i mean perl culture is highly individualistic[[hackers]]. although there are healthy communes as well.
although it is always tempting for to form a gang and take over, going this way is baaaaaaaaad. please dont be tempted to group thinking coz all that it leads to is confusion and destruction. all perl people should simply continue with their creative endeavours.
however i do suggest one thing to attract new individuals rewamping the sites should be a whole lot better because individuals are attracted to creativity and nothing else. perl is failing in this dept.
the dosage of fun && creativity should always center stage of perl but currently bad design[[too hard to find good stuff]], old design[[web 2.0 people! and more colours!]] and old info are taking the center stage. this can easily be solved by some kind of competition [[think iron man !]]
although the same can be said of perl all that i can say is git should take care of it. there does not exist a similiar infrastucture that will allow mix and match for the websites and thats why they have become dangerously monolothic.
sites like http://perl.net.au/ provide more information because of such dynamic maintanance mechanisms.
