I guess this was intended for the regular pike list so I'm forwarding it. If
this is bad etiquette please forgive me, I have little experience with mailing
lists. I don't know why you folks can't use an online forum like the rest of the
modern world ;) all joking aside though, mailing lists are a huge turn off to
new potential recruits to the Pike cause!
Brian Lacy
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
From: <creatorbri[at]gmail.com>
To: H. William Welliver III
Subject: Re: Anyone out there?
Thanks for the responses thus far.
You bring up a critical subject: that of the target audience for pike. I agree
that ruby and python devs are a tough crowd. I wonder if Java devs are any
better. There's not much language agnosticism in any of these groups from what
I've seen. At the risk of being discredited completely by showing an obvious
bias, I'd like to suggest an alternative: Web Developers, and specifically PHP
Devs.
I sense a few eye rolls. I realize the whole Apache discussion is a mine field
so I wanna take a step back. Think instead about what this bunch is all about.
We have to use half a dozen tools to get anything done, and we're always looking
something better because, as much as we love PHP, we realize that it sucks. The
syntax of pike, irrelevant perhaps to the CS purists, offers a more organized
and logical alt. The biggest hurdle is making it accessible, because we're also
some of the laziest coders you'll find. I'm not saying 'mod_pike'. I'm saying we
just want it simple.
Finally, keep in mind that although lazy, we are highly adaptive and tend to
latch onto something new quite easily. We're also an exciteable bunch. If pike
ever got an upgrade that put it more readily in the hands of web devs, I think
you'd find your ranks swelling uncontrollably.
Just my cent-and-a-half.
Brian
PS - I am in Utah, USA. Germany is a long walk from my front door.
H. William Welliver III wrote:
Hi Brian,
(I didn't see your original post, perhaps it got caught in my UCE
filter.)
This topic comes up fairly regularly. My thoughts on this have
changed subtly over the years and i'll share my current view.
I don't think the pike community has died or is dying, but it also
has not reached the critical mass necessary to propel it to the
forefront of people's attention, like you see with other languages
like ruby or python. a lot of folks won't even consider something
without the buzz or large quantities of online material, and and
that's a shame. to be sure, there are shortcomings in pike and it's
ecosphere, the primary one being documentation, which is slowly
improving. however, there's nothing that would stop an enterprising
developer from getting the job done using pike.
My observation is there are a lot of sheep out there: folks that seem
to look for the easy solution (which is often completely
understandable)... "has someone already done what i need so that I
can just copy and paste it?" People looking for that will ultimately
end up being disappointed by Pike at some point. However, I'm not
aware of any reasonable pike related question having ever gone
unanswered. Now, it may be that the answer was that "no one's done
that before" and the conversation ends there if the person was just
looking to be handed the solution. That said, if there were a follow
up that went something like: "ok, so how might one approach the
problem", i've never had anyone not provide feedback.
So, I think I'm okay with Pike not having taken over the world. I
used to think it'd be great if it did, and would try to come up with
ways to help. I've since come to realize that taking over the world
means 1% of the critical mass being people who were interested in
helping, and the rest being "scavengers". I still think it'd be great
to reach that tipping point with Pike, but I'd rather spend my time
helping those interested in helping themselves (and perhaps sharing
their knowledge, too). In fact, it's not uncommon for me to spend an
evening on something for someone with a need, even if it wasn't
something I had much use for.
I think that sentiment is also shared by a large percentage of the
(really quite brilliant) pike core developers and experts you'll run
into. I encourage you to not give up and to not suffer in silence-
ask if you've got a question or need help finding something.
As a side note, I've been thinking about the ideal candidate for
conversion to the pike way. I think that trying to convince someone
who loves python or ruby is a lost cause. I think that those
languages are arcane and hard to follow, but someone who loves them
is going to think of pike that way. A much better approach, in my
opinion is to find a java developer who's made the realization that
java is an incredibly inefficient way to spend their development time
(and who has a pathological aversion to C#). They'll appreciate the
similarities and the things that "just work" in pike that you'd have
to spend hours on in Java.
Incidentally, where are you located? It's entirely possible that
there's a Pike guru near you and you might not even know it. Also,
it's become a bit of a tradition to have a yearly meet-up, whether
"officially sanctioned" or not. That usually happens in the autumn,
usually in Europe somewhere. Sometimes it's just a few folks,
sometimes a university brings 20 or 30 people for the afternoon. I
highly encourage working it into your schedule if that's at all
appealing.
Best,
Bill Welliver
<hww3[at]riverweb.com>
On Jun 13, 2009, at 3:25 AM, Arne Goedeke wrote:
> As a matter of fact, community building efforts have been discussed
> several times here. I am not so sure what the conclusion was, if any.
>
> I would be glad to see something like a regular pike community meeting
> here in berlin but sadly right now I am surrounded by python
> developers.
> I would be grateful for ideas about how to convert some people, I am
> feeling a little alone ;)
>
> arne
>
>
> Brian Lacy schrieb:
>> I've just subscribed to the Pike mailing list, and I'm wondering if
>> anyone is still out there in the Pike community. From what I can
>> tell,
>> at least through a rather exhaustive Google search, community support
>> for this sweet little language has all but dried up completely!
>>
>> For historical purposes, necessary or otherwise, the date is June
>> 12, 2009.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Brian
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