in reply to "Standing on the shoulders of giants"

The one thing that made CPAN a success was no entrance barrier. All code is welcome on CPAN. Documentation is not required. Prerequisites are not required. Rugged overall construction is not required. Tests are not required. Aspiration is not required. Approval by some Perlmonk is not required either.

The result is that there's a lot of crap on CPAN. And that the existence of a CPAN module doesn't mean anything, other than that the author has figured out how to use PAUSE.

But this makes CPAN work. No requirements. No pressure.

  • Comment on Re: "Standing on the shoulders of giants"

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Re^2: "Standing on the shoulders of giants"
by tye (Sage) on Nov 28, 2011 at 21:56 UTC

    What would make CPAN work even better would be to encourage not so effectively discourage collaboration. CPAN right now does an excellent job of discouraging collaboration. The funniest part is the case when real collaboration isn't even required; the most common case of free software development; the case of the person eventually moving on after they scratched their itch; the case where CPAN does an amazing job of discouraging simple maintenance.

    It makes associating the phrase "on the shoulders of giants" with CPAN humorous to me. That's the aspect of good software development that CPAN does the best job of preventing.

    - tye        

[reply]

      Agreed; CPAN is a lot more useful for me when tools like Git make forking and patching so much easier. Eric Wilhelm's SVN for CPAN would have been nice several years ago.

      Obviously the responsiveness of maintainers is still important (and perhaps my worst failing as a CPAN author) but actively encouraging collaboration would be amazing. To the credit of many people, CPAN has improved dramatically in this respect as of late.

      Improve your skills with Modern Perl: the free book.

[reply]
      I had never thought from this angle. Real collaboration is not required and still it is going on smoothly.
[reply]
Re^2: "Standing on the shoulders of giants"
by Jenda (Abbot) on Nov 29, 2011 at 12:17 UTC

    But of course there is pressure. Quite a bit actually. Peer pressure.

    While there's nothing technical or official preventing you from uploading utter untested and undocumented crap, you generally try not to do that. Because of the way you'd look among the others. So if others add tests, you do too. If others document, you do too.

    The sole fact that you make something public is a pressure enough.

    Jenda
    Enoch was right!
    Enjoy the last years of Rome.

[reply]
      Really? People write tests and documentation just because others do, not because they think it's a good idea all by themselves? It's just like a religion then, you do stuff because others do so, not because you have two braincells to rub against each other.

      You have an even lower opinion of the average CPAN author than I do! Congratulations, I didn't think that was possible.

[reply]

        To exercise is also a good idea yet people seldom succeed in doing so regularly without help from others. That you know and understand something tedious is a good idea is not enough.

        Jenda
        Enoch was right!
        Enjoy the last years of Rome.

[reply]

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