Perl publishing and attracting new developers

[Peter Corlett]

On 18 Sep 2013, at 17:20, gvim <gvimrc at gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> OK, here goes:

Your list of books mostly splits into two distinct groups. The first group are books which are primarily about Perl technologies:

> Web Development with Dancer
> Web Development with Mojolicous
> Object-Oriented Perl with Moose
> Data Processing with Perl and DBIx::Class
> The Modern Perl Cookbook

Dancer and Mojolicious are lightweight, DBIx::Class only slightly less so, and are not separately enough material for a full-sized book. At best, you're talking a 100 page print-on-demand labour of love. 

Mojolicious and Moose *have* such a book, and although I can't find the ISBN for the Moose book, Mojolicious's is http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3848200953/improtripe-21.

Material on DBIx::Class is rolled into other books at an appropriate level, e.g. Ovid's "Beginning Perl" (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1118013840/improtripe-21) introduces it, Jonathan Rockway's "Catalyst" (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1847190952/improtripe-21) covers using it with Catalyst, and so on.

The hypothetical "Modern Perl Cookbook" is a layering violation. Perl Cookbook is a collection of short hints and tips on how to do simple tasks. Modern Perl is how to architect a large system. That's two separate topics, and thus two separate books. Which already exist.


Then you have books where you've taken some other topic, and just stick "with Perl" on the end:

> Agile Development with Perl & Moose
> RESTful APIs with Perl
> HTML5, Javascript & Perl
> Network Programming with Perl (maybe an update from Lincoln Stein)
> Scientific Programming with Perl

What does the "and Perl" add to the material? It may as well say "and Intercal" for all the good it does.

> Analysing Big Data with Perl

This is also just a "with Perl" title, but merits picking out. "Big Data" is a nebulous term of art much like "Web 2.0" is, and roughly means "the fashionable technologies we're using with a big layer of marketing slathered on so people don't realise it's mostly hot air".

Perl isn't part of the Big Data clique. Conversely, when Perl is used to solve the exact same sort of problems, it's not called Big Data.