This is very nice. Between this and Booking.com's (disclaimer: I work there) €100,000 donation just over a month ago TPF is really getting on track for having large corporate sponsorship from organizations who recognize how valuable Perl is for their infrastructure.
I talked to some of the TPF people at Booking.com's donation event and they expressed desires to have more paid-for developers working on the Perl 5 core, and they're really gearing up as an organization for making that happen.
One thing of note for those unfamiliar with the Perl community: Notice how both of these big grants are earmarked for Perl 5 development, not Perl 6 development.
By now Perl 6 is viewed as best an interesting research project by organizations using Perl 5 in production.
I don't mean that as a comment to detract away from what the Perl 6 developers are doing, but to point out that it's a very different pattern than what's happening with the next generation of Python, Ruby, PHP etc. runtimes.
By now Perl 6 is viewed as best an interesting research project by organizations using Perl 5 in production.
As a member of an organization using Perl 5 (among many other languages), I should probably speak up. Though we haven't donated many thousands to TPF, it may be worth noting that with a minimal set of modules, similar stability and performance guarantee within an order of magnitude Perl 5's, we would be using Perl 6 without question. (With that alone it wouldn't replace all of our Perl 5 code, but we would be using more Perl overall as a result.) In fact Niecza is temptingly close to that status at the moment if you factor interop into the equation.
We have a highly polyglot environment, so introducing a new language to that is something that can be taken in stride. I assume a lot of Perl 6 reluctance comes from unfamiliarity, but for us it's more a matter of overall reliability. I find Perl 6 is better able to represent program logic, and I am sure having it in our environment would improve prototyping and maintenance considerably.
Python, Ruby and PHP are converging so much it's becoming totally pointless to keep up with more than one of those, other than availability of tools and runtimes. Looking forward to production-ready Perl 6.
Hard to find, unfortunately, but NET-A-PORTER (disclaimer: I work there) also donated $10,000. As well as LOVEFiLM, Oslo.pm, and Dijkmat donating various amounts. Source: http://www.perlfoundation.org/previous_homepage_news
And TPF can put the money to good use; recently (2010 or 2011, don't remember exactly) they started to pay one core developer (Dave Mitchell) to work on bug fixes and refactors that nobody else wanted to do. Later Nicholas Clark got a similar grant, and both have been used to great effect.
I'm not deeply invovled the p5 developers, but it doesn't look like these grant create envy in other contributors, judging from the development speed.
Depending on how adept you already are at programming:
1] Learning Perl (6th Edition) is excellent for beginners.
2] Modern Perl (2nd Edition was just published; free ebook version should be out by next week) assumes a basic knowledge of both programming in general and of Perl in particular, but is well-written and very clear.
3] Programming Perl (the 4th Edition covering Perl 5.14 will be a huge update from 3rd Edition (published in 2000 for Perl 5.6!); should be published in February, according to O'Reilly) is the famous Camel book and the ultimate Perl reference.
The Perl Cookbook is a little outdated now, although it's not too bad and there is talk on the mailing lists of updating it. But it's not really aimed at learning Perl though.
As already mentioned, PerlMonks is also a great website to browse.
avar|14 years ago
I talked to some of the TPF people at Booking.com's donation event and they expressed desires to have more paid-for developers working on the Perl 5 core, and they're really gearing up as an organization for making that happen.
One thing of note for those unfamiliar with the Perl community: Notice how both of these big grants are earmarked for Perl 5 development, not Perl 6 development.
By now Perl 6 is viewed as best an interesting research project by organizations using Perl 5 in production.
I don't mean that as a comment to detract away from what the Perl 6 developers are doing, but to point out that it's a very different pattern than what's happening with the next generation of Python, Ruby, PHP etc. runtimes.
1. http://news.perlfoundation.org/2012/01/bookingcom-sponsors-1...
smosher|14 years ago
As a member of an organization using Perl 5 (among many other languages), I should probably speak up. Though we haven't donated many thousands to TPF, it may be worth noting that with a minimal set of modules, similar stability and performance guarantee within an order of magnitude Perl 5's, we would be using Perl 6 without question. (With that alone it wouldn't replace all of our Perl 5 code, but we would be using more Perl overall as a result.) In fact Niecza is temptingly close to that status at the moment if you factor interop into the equation.
We have a highly polyglot environment, so introducing a new language to that is something that can be taken in stride. I assume a lot of Perl 6 reluctance comes from unfamiliarity, but for us it's more a matter of overall reliability. I find Perl 6 is better able to represent program logic, and I am sure having it in our environment would improve prototyping and maintenance considerably.
muyuu|14 years ago
draegtun|14 years ago
Unfortunately Perl doesn't have a Sugar Daddy :( However it does have a few benevolent Uncles :)
Here's the breakdown of the last 12 months contributions...
ref: Figures by trawling TPF website. Hopefully I have this correct! http://news.perlfoundation.org/2011/06/viennapm-donates-up-t... | http://news.perlfoundation.org/2011/07/bookingcom-sponsor-p5... | http://news.perlfoundation.org/2011/07/cpanel-sponsor-p5cmf.... | http://news.perlfoundation.org/2012/01/bookingcom-sponsors-1... | http://news.perlfoundation.org/2012/01/craigslist-charitable...adam-_-|14 years ago
jzawodn|14 years ago
avar|14 years ago
perlgeek|14 years ago
I'm not deeply invovled the p5 developers, but it doesn't look like these grant create envy in other contributors, judging from the development speed.
draegtun|14 years ago
ibrow|14 years ago
[Jim Buckmaster] added, "It was unclear at first how best to give something back to Perl. Fortunately there was more than one way to do it."
soapdog|14 years ago
jonathansizz|14 years ago
1] Learning Perl (6th Edition) is excellent for beginners.
2] Modern Perl (2nd Edition was just published; free ebook version should be out by next week) assumes a basic knowledge of both programming in general and of Perl in particular, but is well-written and very clear.
3] Programming Perl (the 4th Edition covering Perl 5.14 will be a huge update from 3rd Edition (published in 2000 for Perl 5.6!); should be published in February, according to O'Reilly) is the famous Camel book and the ultimate Perl reference.
The Perl Cookbook is a little outdated now, although it's not too bad and there is talk on the mailing lists of updating it. But it's not really aimed at learning Perl though.
As already mentioned, PerlMonks is also a great website to browse.
berntb|14 years ago
(Best is probably to ask at PerlMonks.org what to read.)
Edit: My best advice for a newbie is to get the Cookbook after the first basics. The Perl one is really helpful.