Programming Languages & Perl

A Meditation on Perl's Place in the Programming World

Dave Cross

dave@dave.org.uk

Asking Important Questions

• How much is Perl used these days?
• Do existing Perl users write new projects in Perl?
• Are existing Perl users moving away from Perl?
• Do new companies choose to use Perl?
• Do we care?

What "They" Say

• "Perl is dead"
• "Perl is line noise"
• "Perl is for script kiddies"

• "Perl is a just scripting language"

  • (Perl 4 was a scripting language)

Success is a Double-Edged Sword

• In the 90s a lot of people used Perl
• A lot of non-programmers used Perl

• There's a lot of very nasty Perl out there

  • Matt Wright has a lot to answer for
• Like it or not Perl has a terrible reputation
• Hold that thought

Safety Languages vs Dynamic Languages

• The best hackers use dynamic languages
• Only the best hackers can be trusted to use dynamic languages
• Not enough great hackers to go round
• Managers prefer safety languages

• "Enterprise Perl"

  • Not P5EE
• Hold that thought

Dynamic Languages Are Hot

• Ruby on Rails is big news
• How did they get the buzz going?
• Can we learn from that?
• Can we take advantage of their publicity?
• Ruby is a lot like Perl 5
• Perl 6 will be even more like Ruby

Comparing Ruby and Perl

• So Ruby is the coolest thing on the planet right now
• And Perl is yesterday's news
• But Perl and Ruby are very similar
• Ruby doesn't have the historical baggage that Perl does
• Ruby has great PR
• Hold that thought

Golf Course Conversations

• A large proportion of technical decisions are made by non-technical people
• Discussions on the golf course
• These people do not read Slashdot, Digg or use.perl

• They read Fortune and The Economist

  • And, if you're lucky, Computing
• If a technology isn't in those magazines then it doesn't exist
• Perl isn't in those magazines, Ruby is
• Hold that thought

Where are the Perl Programmers?

• Increasingly common question from recruiters
• Where are the junior Perl programmers?
• "We can't get good people if we only use Perl"
• "We can't find Perl programmers"
• Where is the demand for Perl training?

Community Aspects

• The Perl community is full of very smart people
• But they can also be very rude
• Stop being fucking rude to newbies!
• We need to encourage more people into the community
• You're scaring people away
• Dance Monkeys, Dance!

Pick Your Battles

• We have lost the low-end web programming market to PHP
• Deal with it
• It's not such a major loss anyway
• Losing that part of the market might help lose the "Matt's Scripts" tag
• Losing the "Matt's Scripts" tag would be good for our PR
• We're in danger of losing the middle-level web programming market to PHP and/or .Net
• That's more worrying

Perl Isn't Dead

• The Perl community does all sorts of cool and useful things
• The improvements we've made in testing frameworks for example
• Also Catalyst, Jifty, etc
• In the real world unfortunately that counts for very little
• No-one knows about this work

The Echo Chamber

• Most programmers don't read use.perl or perl.com
• Most programmers don't track CPAN releases religiously
• We are not most programmers
• We are not even most Perl programmers
• We are largely an echo chamber

Geeks and Suits

• Perl has two audiences
• We need to talk to both audiences

• Speaking to geeks is easy

  • Given that we're all geeks
• Speaking to suits is harder
• And I think we've been avoiding it
• Bottom-up and top-down

The "M" Word

• It's all about marketing
• Spreading the word to the unenlightened

• I'm not saying we have to become marketroids

  • (Well, not all of us)
• But we should all start to consider what messages we are giving out

Marketing to Geeks

• Make sure colleagues know when Perl has saved time
• Introduce them them to CPAN
• Ask your company to buy copies of Perl Best Practices
• Take colleagues to Perl Monger meetings
• Be nicer to people on mailing lists
• Offer to give Perl talks at non-Perl geek meetings
• "Be an advocate, not an asshole"

Marketing to Suits (internally)

• Make sure that managers know when Perl has saved money
• Offer to run lunchtime training sessions
• Be positive - don't criticise alternative technologies

Marketing to Suits (externally)

• We need to get Perl mentioned in management magazines
• Slow process
• Mentions in magazines like Computing lead to mentions in magazines like the Economist
• A lot of content in magazines like Computing is driven by Press Releases

Press Releases

• Can your company produce a press release about success stories using Perl?
• Can your open source project produce a press release when a new version is released?
• Can TPF produce press releases for new versions of Perl?

Releasing Press Releases

• TPF produced a press release for Perl 5.8.0
• As far as I know, no-one published it
• It wasn't widely distributed
• Can you help?
• Do you have IT press contacts?
• Do you know people in the IT media?

Some Vague Conclusions

• Perl isn't dead
• But from outside the echo chamber, it's sometimes hard to see that
• Everyone can be an evangelist
• Bottom-up and top-down
• More Perl usage == More Perl jobs
• Everyone wins