Re: Size of CPAN

[LTjake]

Hey, that's a totally cool statistic -- from the 50,000 foot level. And, at a glance, that may be all we would want to look at.

Looking a little closer, here are a few questions:

• is 15,000,000 lines of code better than, let's say, 14,000,000 lines code?
• what percentage is actively maintained?
• what percentage is duplication (modules that accomplish the same task)
• what percentage is "production ready"
• ...and more

CPANTS tries to answer some of these questions with Kwalitee metrics (and succeeds to some degree). As for the others, I'm not sure we can find an answer -- and maybe it's not important -- I'm just looking at it from a different perspective.

Cheers.

[tomazos]

All valid questions.

It is often commented that CPAN is one of the most impressive parts of "Perl" (along with the flexibility of the language, and the size and supportiveness of the community).

CPAN is one of Perl's biggest selling points and differentiates it significantly from alternative platforms.

To understand the value in the 50,000 feet approach, consider the following scenario:

• You are trying to get a skeptical programmer interested in finding out more about CPAN.
• They only know a little about Perl and CPAN.
• You only have time to say eight words to them.

What is the optimal thing to say in those eight words?

The best answer I can think of is "CPAN offers 15,000,000 lines of free code."

The point is that although there is more to the story - people don't always have time to invest in listening to it.

-Andrew.