Perl Blogs

At YAPC::Europe this year I gave a talk called Proud to Use Perl where I talked about some of the achievements of the Perl community and suggested that we should shout about these achievements a little more than we do.

And as an example of this shouting, I set up a new Proud to Use Perl web site where I was going to write about all of the amazing things that Perl has to be proud of.

Which I did for about a week.

It's always the same. I go to a Perl conference, get too enthused about stuff and end up volunteering to get involved in too many projects and having to spread myself too thin.

So the Proud to Use Perl site effectively died.

But even though I don't have the time to put into it, I still think it's a good idea. And I wondered if anyone else would be interested in getting involved.

So I'm looking for a few people who would like to write for the site. It would be great if we could get new an interesting things published on the site every couple of days. Surely there's no shortage of things for the Perl community to be proud of. It might be a good place, for example, to share success stories.

Anyone interested in getting involved? Leave a comment here or drop me an email.

And that's not the only Perl web site project I've been neglecting. Earlier this year, I registered the domain culturedperl.org. The idea with that was that I'd set up a blog talking about Perl culture (in some vague, undefined way). But that site was abandoned even sooner. I didn't even get as far as installing Movable Type.

So I'm interested in getting a few authors to help me out there too. Maybe a few Perl Monger group leaders could write things there? Or people involved in organising YAPCs. Or people involved in other parts of the culture - Perl Monks, perhaps, or Perl Golf.

I'll get MT installed on the server this evening. Same thing applies, if you're interested then leave a comment or drop me an email.

More Perl blogs has got to be good, right?

See the Copyright notice on my home node.

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club." -- Chip Salzenberg

Comment on Perl Blogs

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl Blogs by koolgirl (Hermit) on Oct 17, 2008 at 04:08 UTC
++ Excellent idea, admirable enthusiasm! I would love to be a part of both projects, however, I'm not sure how useful I could be, I've only just begun learning Perl this past year, and wouldn't quite call myself proficient as of yet. Nonetheless, newcomer or not, I am a part of Perl culture and I do have time, ability, skill (at least on some level ;) and enthusiasm to offer, so, if you can think of anything, at all, a new Perl Girl such as myself could contribute, please let me know, I would love to donate my time to the advancement of Perl, in any way, small or large. :)	[reply]
Re^2: Perl Blogs by rhesa (Vicar) on Oct 17, 2008 at 14:59 UTC
The most valuable thing you can do, is to provide documentation -- in whatever form -- of all the difficulties you encounter when learning something new, and how you overcame them. As a beginner, you have a different perspective than the language designer or module developer. And generally, documentation tends to be written by experts, for experts, which can make it hard for a beginner to get started. Since the documentation writer is an expert, it can be hard for them to remember what it was like as a beginner. This is actually relevant for everyone: no matter how much experience you have with Perl (or programming) in general, you'll try out new modules all the time, and each time, you're a beginner with respect to that module. Keeping a diary of your initial struggles might help the next person trying that module. And someone with writer skills (that could be you!) might actually turn that into proper documentation that could be contributed to the project in question. So go ahead and write whatever you think could help someone else in your position.	[reply]
Re^3: Perl Blogs by Anonymous Monk on May 25, 2009 at 17:09 UTC
I think your right, modules are indeed very important for you to be more knowlegable if you are a beginner. And also one should always take note on where you are having difficulties so that you can go back to it, check on your module and try to solve it with the help pf the module and also the other people who has more experience and skills than you	[reply]
Re: Perl Blogs by ggvaidya (Pilgrim) on Oct 17, 2008 at 07:19 UTC
Instead of setting up a new blog, maybe you could get people together and write a weekly "column" on Perlbuzz instead? That way, you don't have to force yourself to have a good story up every few days, Perlbuzz gets more content and becomes more of a 'daily' magazine, and I have something to read while waiting for my code to upload onto our server. Of course, petdance might be the first person to disagree with me on that: he wrote a lovely article a few months ago on how diversifying the community is a good move. So maybe a new site, completely different from anything that's been tried before, might be a better way to go? Either way, I'm not much of a writer, but I'll help out with editing/ad-hoc tasks if you point me to a mailing list I can sign up to. And when you have a site up, do announce it on PM/PB!	[reply]
Re: Perl Blogs by smiffy (Pilgrim) on Oct 17, 2008 at 06:31 UTC
I actually thought that your post was something different, based on the title. I was about to reply "yes, I wrote my blog software in Perl!" But I have been known to write articles on other topics before, so might be willing to contribute I get a better idea what is on/off topic. How about "How I got totally ${expletive}d off with WordPress and ended up writing my own blog software in Perl"? Then I could use the original answer I thought I had for your post ;-) And I fully understand the over-committing thing; been there, done it, never found the time to wear the tee-shirt ;-)	[reply]
Re: Perl Blogs by marcussen (Pilgrim) on May 26, 2009 at 00:35 UTC
Suffering burnout is common with most things, but I think blogs especially. As others have suggested it might be more prudent to combine forces, whether that means submitting to perlbuzz or bringing some new blood on board for your own blog or forum. Go grab a partner and pony up :) To help keep you motivated, perhaps entering into http://www.enlightenedperl.org/ironman.html would help? Confucius says kill mosquito unless cannon	[reply]


Clear questions and runnable code get the best and fastest answer
	PerlMonks