Perl 5 is dying, perl.org sites are ugly, and apparently there's a marketing problem somewhere around here.
So what?
I don't mean "Who cares?" I mean "What are you going to do about it?"
By "you" I don't mean Curtis, or Jarkko, or Andy, or Schwern, or mst, or Ask, or Adam, or Dave, or Chris, or Elliot, or Bill, or Richard, or any of the other several dozen usual suspects who've done far more than any reasonable person have a right to expect. I mean the "you" who reads this and sagely nods your head while thinking "Somebody should do something!" You're somebody. You can do something.
(I'm very happy to run "Something cool I did with Perl!" on Perl.com, so if you've done something cool in a hundred or so lines of Perl -- especially if you can tie it to cloud computing, or inventing the future, or helping people do amazing things -- let me know. I can sweeten the deal by offering free books to contributors.)
I have an art degree. Who needs some art/illustration/design work for an open source perl program/perl site? This is the time for holiday giving. Gimme Gimme Gimme some thing to give. Just lead me to water.
With all honesty. I can't hack Parrot. I can't help with Perl 6 internals. I *can* make things look neat.
Re:Art
tron on 2008-12-04T09:21:45
I'd love to see a new clean and fresh design for use.perl.org.
First impression matters and this is one of the most prominent perl sites.
But I must admit that I'm neither in a position to decide on that nor do I know how laborious it would be to actually implement a design on the use.perl.org software.Re:Art
leaddadaist on 2008-12-04T11:04:03
What's kinda cool about use.perl is I think most of the design and layout is done with css, so playing with it, would be easy, without having to bother pudge to get it applied. There may be a, "How to Style Slash" guide somewhere - I do remember there was that, "Design Slashdot" competition a few years back that we could cherry-pick ideas from.
If there's no style guide, it may be another way to contribute to slash, although, if the only sites using it are Slashdot and use.perl, it may be irrelevant. Something does tell me there's some head-into-wall bashing instances of css code, though. One would assume
:) Re:Art
pnu on 2008-12-04T19:52:51
Wow, that's really cool.
Guys, please! We need a pro web designer here. Urgently. Old unix-nerds just can't make their sites look good enough.
Re:Art
moritz on 2008-12-04T10:21:07
Thank you very much for your offer, it's highly appreciated.
As a contributor to Rakudo (Perl 6 on Parrot) I'd like to have a nice logo for it (one that can be used as an executable icon on windows, and on official websites).
If you'd like to contribute to that, we should get in contact regarding ideas, background and other stuff.
Just send a mail either to me (moritz@faui2k3.org) or to the mailing list (perl6-compiler@perl.org) and we'll can get together somehow.(And yes, I agree with tron that a few websites need also a redesign, though I think that www.perl.org is more important in that respect. But I'd like to go smaller steps first).
Re:Art
leaddadaist on 2008-12-04T11:01:10
I'll send this right away, as I'm very serious. I'm not sure if stating this in chromatic's journal is a wholly acceptable way to throw my hat in the mix, but hey, it won't be the first time I make a faux-pax in my life
:) Re:Art
tron on 2008-12-04T11:49:44
Given that we have a rather unique marketing chance with Rakudo I must agree that having nice artwork for it is really important.
On the other hand I don't agree with www.perl.org being more important (because I use it mostly as a stopover).
I consider PerlMonks next to use.perl.org as most important.Re: first impressions
Denny on 2008-12-04T12:39:21
In that case what we also have is a problem whereby neither www.perl.org nor www.perl.com is a particularly good jump-off point for people new to the Perl community. As those are the two domains they're most likely to visit as their first online step into the world of Perl, that seems like something we should think about.Remember, our main problem re: 'perl is dead' is not what you or I think of the designs of these sites, nor the designs of the sites we use the most. It's what the people new to the idea of using Perl think of the sites they go to first.
Re:Art for Padre
gabor on 2008-12-04T18:12:28
Thanks for offering your help.The Padre Perl IDE needs both an icon for the project to be displayed on web and on the windows, linux and Mac executables.
It also needs some improvement to its standard Trac gui, maybe even using the currently almost empty Perl IDE web site.
If you can still take such project I'd be glad if you contacted us via IRC on #padre or on the padre-dev mailing list found on our web site.
Re:Art for Padre
leaddadaist on 2008-12-04T20:36:23
That sounds like a fun project! I'll contact you shortly about it. I'm sure I can lend a hand,
Re:But wait! There's more!
chromatic on 2008-12-04T18:54:21
Let's take this to email; I think there's a serious article in the Debian story.
I try to perpetuate the culture and enrich the community that attracted me to Perl a little over 6 years ago and hasn't let go.
I spend time working on other people's problems for no other reason than to help
I have written a CPAN module
I have written dozens of patches and emailed other authors about improvements to their code
I have written an article published on perl.com
I have answered thousands of questions on PerlMonks and an unknown number on IRC
I have written a half a dozen tutorials on PerlMonks
I have a Perl related blog
I hang out on places where new comers go such as PerlMonks and IRC and help them along - often times pointing them to resources
I attend conferences
I talk about Perl to anyone who will listen - online or in meatspace
I am honest when I talk about Perl and I think that is important. It isn't all roses and I don't pretend otherwise.
In addition to enriching and perpetuating the community, I also support the developement and advances of the language to keep it relavent
I have contributed a patch to perl 5 (albeit a short doc fix)
I have filed bug reports
I fill out surveys when people ask for input on improving things
I have contributed code to both Parrot and Pugs
I have asked questions on the Perl 6 mailing list
I have built and tested Parrot on platforms such as Win32/Cygwin and Win32/MinGW which seem to be step children but are important to someone
I have publicly and privately provided funding to developers to work on the future of perl
I am not sure what else I would have time to be doing. If you, or anyone else, has an idea of what I could better spend my time on to help I am all ears. I could certainly write articles for perl.com but it would come at the cost of not spending time on PerlMonks or on IRC - I am tapped out of time so changing WHAT I do with that time is the only offer I can make.
Re:What I do
chromatic on 2008-12-04T18:51:16
I am not sure what else I would have time to be doing.
A beginner's book might be nice, but I believe no one has the right to criticize you for how you spend your time. Certainly, you have no reason to feel guilty for not doing enough. Thank you.
Re:What I do
Ovid on 2008-12-08T11:33:34
A beginner's book for Perl? I didn't think there would be a market outside of "Learning Perl". Aren't there a ton of them? (Though most of them are astonishingly bad).
Re:What I do
chromatic on 2008-12-08T18:52:10
Learning Perl assumes you already know how to program. Where's Elements of Programming with Perl for Perl 5.10? Where's Head First Perl?
I haz a Sekrit... it might help a bit.
So what?
I don't mean "Who cares?" I mean "What are you going to do about it?"
Well, *I* mean "who cares?"
From where I sit use.perl.org is just fine and Perl is doing OK too. If people disagree, they should already be doing something. If they aren't doing something they either don't think there's a problem or don't care enough to fix it.
I think fishing for help is usually the wrong thing to do. If you have to work hard to get help to solve a problem then you're looking at the wrong problem.
Re:Who cares?
btilly on 2008-12-08T03:23:14
Have you noticed how many people have trouble staying logged in?
Have you noticed the complaints that journals no longer show up by default when you are not logged in?
Both of these started with the upgrade. I reported both to you in email. I have seen multiple people complain about them. Neither has been addressed.
I admit that I don't care enough to create and administer a replacement site. But I for one don't consider this state of affairs fine.
Re:Who cares?
pudge on 2008-12-08T04:06:30
Have you noticed how many people have trouble staying logged in?
No. I've only seen about two people complain about it, and neither has offered me any help in figuring it out.
Have you noticed the complaints that journals no longer show up by default when you are not logged in?
No, just you. And I don't think "no longer" is accurate, as I don't think it showed up at some other time either.
Both of these started with the upgrade.
"The" upgrade?
I reported both to you in email.
I have no record of you reporting trouble staying logged in.
I have seen multiple people complain about them.
I have not.
Neither has been addressed.
The former, I see nothing more than anecdotal evidence from two (now you, three) people, with no information helping me figure it out (despite some requests). I do not recognize any actual problem at this point.
The latter, I don't think is a big deal, but it could be added easily enough.
But I for one don't consider this state of affairs fine.
Shrug.
Re:Who cares?
btilly on 2008-12-08T04:31:49
Journals used to show up by default whether or not I was logged in before the server switch you described in http://use.perl.org/user/pudge/journal/37237. Which is the upgrade that I was talking about.
I might not have complained to you when the login problem happened. I first noticed it on Oct 22 as described at http://use.perl.org/user/btilly/journal/37722. The problem seems to have mediated itself since, I only find myself expectedly logged out about once a week now. What information can I give on that that is useful? "I'm browsing along as normal. I click on someone's journal. I am no longer logged in. Everything I click on says tat I am logged out. I login. Problem gone for a while."
Yeah, that is an annoying bug report. I can't tell you how to reproduce it because I can't reliably reproduce it. (Though for a while I couldn't reliably not reproduce it.) But don't think it is not real and not annoying.
As for other people complaining about these things, I'm too lazy at the moment to track them down, but I have seen other complaints about these issues in replies to other journals. So it isn't just me.
Re:Who cares?
pudge on 2008-12-08T06:44:14
Journals used to show up by default whether or not I was logged in before the server switch you described in http://use.perl.org/user/pudge/journal/37237. Which is the upgrade that I was talking about.
Bizarre. The only reason it wouldn't show up is data, and the data didn't change, it was just carried over (and there were almost no code changes). I see no reason why this (or any update) would have changed this.
I'm browsing along as normal. I click on someone's journal. I am no longer logged in. Everything I click on says tat I am logged out. I login. Problem gone for a while.
Assuming you actually are not logged in: Does your IP address change, possibly, between clicks? What browser? If Firefox, any extensions that could be interfering?
But don't think it is not real and not annoying.
I don't; sorry if that's how you took it. I just don't at this point believe it is a widespread problem, or that the site is necessarily causing it. But I am open to such possibilities, and I'll try to narrow it down.
Re:Who cares?
btilly on 2008-12-08T07:08:19
And here we have an example of the stellar responsiveness we've come to expect.
I don't know why the default changed last August, but it did. Your assumption that I was not logged in is bad, because I was on a page that was logged in, said my name and all, clicked a link and was logged out. Or, as happened to me 5 minutes ago, I clicked on a link in my email and landed at a logged out page when I had done the same an hour earlier and saw a logged in page. I have experienced this with Firefox 2 and no extensions. I experienced it at home, which is on cable and the IP address could theoretically change but almost certainly doesn't. I have experienced it at work where my IP definitely doesn't change. I do not experience anything like this at any other sites. (Disclaimer, I have not logged in
/. in years, so the problem might show up there and I would not know.) Looking at my cookies I see that I send a __umtb expires at 11:30 today, __umtc expires at the end of the session (what session?), the others are well in the future. I wish I had looked at them before I logged back in, but I didn't so I can't say what they would have said.
Re:Who cares?
chromatic on 2008-12-08T07:36:35
And here we have an example of the stellar responsiveness we've come to expect.
I don't really care if you two argue, but can you find a better place than in the comments to this journal entry? Thanks.
Re:Who cares?
Denny on 2009-02-09T13:26:35
__utm[abc] cookies are usually Urchin AKA Google Analytics, iirc.Re:Who cares?
phillup on 2008-12-09T16:29:17
I'm browsing along as normal. I click on someone's journal. I am no longer logged in. Everything I click on says tat I am logged out. I login. Problem gone for a while.
Assuming you actually are not logged in: Does your IP address change, possibly, between clicks? What browser? If Firefox, any extensions that could be interfering?
If it helps, here is another data point...
I read the journals via bloglines. I'm using FireFox 2.x. I have it configured to open a new tab when I middle click on a journal entry.
I just opened up 8 journal entries. The seventh one did not have me logged in. (but the sixth and eighth ones did)
Not knowing a darn thing about your setup... I'd guess you have a backend server that could not find the required info for my account while the other backends could.
P.S. Can someone relay this to Pudge? (I'm on his foe list)
TIA
Re:Who cares?
Denny on 2009-02-09T13:30:11
For what it's worth, I'm seeing frequent random logouts this morning - I've been on the site less than an hour and my session has vanished from underneath me 3 times now.
I have quite a few (well, half a dozen) tabs open to various bits of the site, that's about the only thing I'm doing that I can even vaguely see as being the cause of any issues. I'm definitely on a static IP.
