in reply to Re^6: A wholly inadequate reply to an Anonymous Monk
in thread A wholly inadequate reply to an Anonymous Monk
I see your point. I was speaking specifically to the idea that the world outside the Perl community needs the marketing. I think marketing there is a mistake and has more downside than up for the immediate future. I also think marketing is a mismatch with attracting contributors. Marketing, at face value, is attracting buyers. I know we're talking about it in a broader sense but I think it's an important distinction.
It probably is the time to ramp up the call for participation and use internally. When devs like me, firmly in the "not an internals hacker" type, are starting to get interested on our own, we probably just need a bit more direction from the "core" team. I'm a good example. I'm smart enough to help with certain pieces but by no means smart enough to dig in from the top and find where I should be trying to help.
This is difficult timing also because Perl 5 got *much* more interesting in the last 2-5 years. Moose, Plack, DBIC, Catalyst, DateTime, KiokuDB, FormFu, and so many more… I'm just starting to get good at some of that and it's fun and exciting and takes all extra tuits. And Perl 6's discussions are often awfully meta. The kind of stuff that only about 15 of the "Saints in our Book" can even follow. So it's intimidating as much as exciting.
A core of tutorials and projects could go miles to getting the mid-level devs like me more engaged. It would be a huge amount of work for whoever took it on though and it might be early even for that. We're the second wave. The ones who will do a lot of the "ant" work of carrying pebbles from Perl 5 to 6 ("porting" CPAN). The really smart cats who should be on the job now, seem to be to me. I'm personally in no hurry and I don't see that anyone is doing anything wrong while working on Perl 6 in any capacity he or she chooses. So don't mistake my disdain for much of this but-what-if/where's-my-pony for criticism. I'm just happy it's chugging along at any speed.
Um… I seem to have written myself into a corner without any strong finisher. Go team!