I was reading chromatics article on his thoughts on why perl funding was so hard. It can be found here http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2011/11/why-is-funding-perl-core-development-so-difficult.html
Though i had other things to do, it sort of got to me. Couldn't stop thinking about it in the back of my mind. Above all chromatic listed 10 points he was weighing up regarding the issue. I needed more information, the key thing I kept thinking was "Are we asking?" if we are do they say no and why. I tried to find evidence of us asking, I found the charities committte the perl foundation http://www.perlfoundation.org/press_releases after reviewing the page and its docs(all very professional) I still had the same concern. More so that whilst the committee may be asking are they clear in what they were asking for, the page beyond saying help perl it doesn't ask for anything in particular. There is no "Help Perl achieve x goal and this will provide y benefit to you!" In my summation of life people don't usually give unless they see something in it for them. So I searched google "perl what do people want". I found this recent post by Leon Timmermans http://blogs.perl.org/users/leon_timmermans/2011/10/why-do-you-want-new-major-features-in-core.html . It's an interesting article, whilst it doesn't directly answer the question it does raise a question my head as a newbie to Perl. It appears that it could be said that 5.10 introduced several "trinkety" features (see Leon's article). Hmm if I had invested money in perl development at this time would I feel it wasn't well spent or directed? Would I then want to invest again? The pumpking has proposed several improvements and perhaps a certain level of breakage in backwards compatibility by flagging using use 5.16 for the upcoming perl release. Perhaps the best thing Perl funding could benefit from is openly asking those who would/could invest for feedback on what they want from Perl? What would make them want to invest in upgrading from 5.6/5.8 to 5.16 say? Maybe the journey could be started by identifying "trinkety" and unused features in Perl and getting consensus on their removal. By removing cruft it would allow Perl the people and the charities committee to highlight the positive language enhancements that have been made since perl 5.6. It reduce the amount of new effort required in developing and it could insure a new killer feature such as class:MOP may successfully make it into 5.16. Rather than being a revolution 5.16 could be Perl "Smart Evolution" a line in the sand with a clearer focus smart new language features and a solid base for new development. Could it provide the catfor old alyst for new tutorials, books that can focus on "Perl Now" and not have concern for old code for which there already exists a plethora of resources. New books, new tutorials means more Perl Buzzzz which means more interest and more money and fundng!! Or does it? Sayth -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
