Re: Re(3): Why I choose Perl

[Elian]

I think you very much overestimate the likelyhood that any of these archive projects will go anywhere. CPAN isn't new--it's been around for ages, and it arose from the ideas that were part of CTAN before it. This is not new stuff. Neither is it a new thought for the Python/Java/Ruby/VB/C/C++/Haskell/Scheme/Lisp/whatever communities to have their own. You'll note how many of those have materialized.

Building a CPAN network is dead-simple. It doesn't require much code, it doesn't require much talk, it doesn't require much planning, and it doesn't require much coordination. (Ask Jarkko) What it requires is a good chunk of sysadmin-ish effort on the part of a few people. You'll note how often that happens.

Archive networks have a chance of success when they're set up by someone with sysadmin skills, not programming skills. That's why so many attempts fail--programmers aren't sysadmins. Some very few programmers are also sysadmins, or sysadmins are programmers, but being a programmer confers zero (and sometimes negative) admin skills. Worse, most programmers wildly overestimate their admin skills, and often actively discourage those few who actually have them.

I'd love to see more CPAN-style networks set up. I won't believe one exists for a language until I actually see the damn thing in use. Until then it's fancy vapor with little hope of success.

[Aristotle]

See also the use.perl.org article with Jarkko's writeup on the topic.

Makeshifts last the longest.