How to bring newbies to perl?

http://www.yapcna.org/yn2015/talk/6083

Transcript

1. Introduction
   ●
   I'm Upasana
   – Working at booking.com
   – Contribute to some FOSS projects
   ●
   Contact me:
   – me@upasana.me
   – upasana on irc.perl.org & irc.freenode.net
   

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2. The culprit!
   

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3. What I am going to present
   ●
   Perl is short of newbies
   – Is it true?
   – Why?
   – how can we bring more newbies to Perl?
   

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4. Disclaimer
   ●
   While preparing for this talk, I was short of content.
   ●
   I asked at various places for people's opinions on this
   topic.
   ●
   I got a very good response from everywhere.
   ●
   So, opinions could be of my friends, family, colleagues or
   may be of some internet trolls.
   

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5. Who's a newbie?
   ●
   Someone doing perl programming for 3 or less than 3
   years.
   

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6. What made me think of it?
   ●
   I've plenty of friends in the perl community
   – Of various age groups.
   – Of various experience levels.
   – But most of them have been doing perl for more than
   3 years
   

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7. What made me think of it?
   ●
   I came across this repository of implementation of
   various algorithms in various languages
   – https://github.com/kennyledet/Algorithm-Implementations
   ●
   But Perl was missing! :(
   

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8. What made me think of it?
   ●
   A friend shared this
   – http://raftconsensus.github.io/
   – Raft is a consensus algorithm for fault-tolerant
   distributed systems.
   ●
   He also shared the fact that Perl is missing there.
   ●
   I didn't know about it until he told me :(.
   

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9. Perl is short of newbies
   ●
   When I told this to people, some of them asked me for
   statistics.
   ●
   So, I asked some Perl trainers for statistics.
   ●
   Sadly, I can't present the raw data due to privacy issues.
   ●
   I extracted statistical trends from that data.
   

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10. Statistics
    2004-05
    2005-06
    2006-07
    2007-08
    2008-09
    2009-10
    2010-11
    2011-12
    2012-13
    0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
    66
    62
    78
    56
    76
    72
    37
    20
    18
    Number of peope attended the course
    Year
    

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11. Why people left Perl!
    ●
    Bad reputation of older perl language
    – Web development was a pain
    ●
    CGI
    

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12. No easy way of doing OOP
    

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13. Why people left perl!
    ●
    Documentation & syntax are difficult to understand as
    compared to other languages.
    ●
    Bad reputation of perl community in past.
    

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14. Why people left perl!
    ●
    As a result of last two points
    – People who learnt Perl 10 years ago, moved towards
    other languages(python, ruby) in past.
    – They never came back!
    

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15. But now, it has changed
    ●
    For web development
    – Catalyst.
    – Mojolicious, Dancer, AMON.
    

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16. But now, it has changed!
    ●
    For OOP
    – Moose, Moo, p5-mop.
    – And yes, p5-mop may go into perl core in future.
    

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17. PERL COMMUNITY IS NOT
    BAD AT ALL
    

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18. Our good things
    

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19. Our good things
    ●
    Great support for text-processing
    ●
    ack
    ●
    Request Tracker
    ●
    Bugzilla
    

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20. Our good things
    ●
    CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network)
    ●
    Friendly & helpful community.
    

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21. Our good things
    ●
    Multi-purpose language
    – Web development
    – System administration
    – Desktop applications
    

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22. But we've some bad[1] things as well
    [1] they were awesome when they were invented, but not anymore
    

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23. Our bad things
    ●
    Good CMS
    – blogs.perl.org is a good example of it
    

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24. Our bad things
    ●
    Our website
    – No success stories
    – Really old look
    – No REPL
    

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25. Uncategorized perly traits
    ●
    TIMTOWTDI (There Is More Than One Way To Do It).
    – It confuses people
    

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26. Uncategorized perly traits
    ●
    Perl one liners.
    – Everything in one line, seriously?
    – Not a clean language?
    – http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PerlGolf
    

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27. Why there're less newbies!
    ●
    Less Massive Open Online Courses for Perl
    – Only Udemy & Alison have Perl courses
    – Udacity, CourseEra have courses on Python, Ruby &
    Scala etc.
    

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28. Why there're less newbies!
    ●
    Less participation in internship programs
    – Perl participated twice in Google Summer of Code.
    – Perl participated four times in GNOME's Outreach
    Program for Women.
    – But we should probably have more of them.
    

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29. Why there're less newbies!
    ●
    Companies do not want to train new people
    – Well! This is a rather general fact, which applies to all
    languages.
    – Our company i.e. Booking.com does train new
    people :)
    

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30. & we are hiring
    (not only perl developers :)
    

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31. Why there're less newbies!
    ●
    We may not have not marketed well.
    ●
    People's interests are market driven
    – Python, PHP, Ruby,... are more popular than Perl in
    market.
    – Newbies tend to learn those languages instead of
    Perl.
    

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32. Why there're less newbies!
    ●
    No university teaches perl, they prefer python, SICP,...
    – Atleast, I've not seen any!
    

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33. Why there're less newbies!
    ●
    Less good examples to convince people to use the
    language
    

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34. Perl events
    ●
    OSCON
    – Started as a Perl conference :)
    – Now, Wikipedia says that “the amount of Perl content
    has continued to decline year over year”.
    ●
    Yet Another Perl Conference (YAPCs)
    ●
    FOSDEM
    ●
    Various PM meetups & workshops.
    

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35. Perl newbies at Perl events
    ●
    Some people who organize & attend Perl conferences
    say
    – We see quite a few newbies every year.
    – But we see most of them only once.
    – We don't have a problem attracting newbies. Our
    problem is with keeping the newbies.
    

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36. Why newbies go to perl conferences only once!
    ●
    They may not understand the content of talks!
    – It's very much possible that content of talks is very
    advanced.
    ●
    They may not like the community!
    ●
    I don't get any other reason(s) :(
    

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37. Want newbies in Perl conferences every year!
    ●
    Try to make your talks beginner friendly.
    ●
    Be friendly with newbies :).
    

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38. How can we bring more newbies to Perl
    ●
    By introducing Perl in various MOOCs.
    ●
    By organizing internship programs like Google Summer Of
    Code & GNOME's Outreach Program frequently.
    ●
    By talking about Perl at non-perl events
    – Tell them about advantages of Perl over other languages.
    – Tell them that Perl is not horrible at all.
    ●
    CPAN authors
    – Please document your modules in a newbie friendly
    manner!
    

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39. How can we bring more newbies to Perl
    ●
    By writing concise Perl tutorials
    – e.g. Tutorials on perlmaven.com
    ●
    By making newbies to stop following old Perl books
    – learn.perl.org still suggests a book written in 2000
    

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40. If you're a newbie & want to start with perl
    ●
    Start with any of these books
    – Beginning Perl by Curtis Ovid Poe
    – Modern Perl by Chromatic
    ●
    If you want to stay up to date with latest perl happenings
    – blogs.perl.org
    ●
    Many perl programmers post there.
    – Subscribe to Perl Weekly
    

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41. If you're a newbie (or may be
    even if you're not a newbie)
    

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44. Thanks to
    ●
    People who shared their opinions with me, a very long
    list!
    ●
    Two perl trainers who shared statistics of their perl
    courses.
    ●
    Chris Prather for reviewing initial versions of talk slides.
    

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45. Thanks for your time!
    

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46. Questions?
    

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