Re: Re [OT]: mod_perl output filter and mod_proxy, mod_cache

Yes, CPAN has very, very useful things. I consider its biggest problems
1) too difficult to find things when not knowing what one wants, 2) a
huge undergrowth of modules that are either bad quality or unmaintained
or duplicated with a later module. The number of lingering bugs are an
obstacle, yet at the same time super-useful things are "hiding" in plain
view. 

Apropos, Perl Dancer was "hiding" for me because I didn't see it here,
http://search.cpan.org/modlist/World_Wide_Web .. but many more such 
discoveries in the past. A simple global ranking by popularity (the 
number of times downloaded) and/or by size and maturity (time located
on CPAN) would expose many "new" things to many, I think. If other 
modules depend on them, then that may speak to quality somewhat, and 
much better rating could be done. MongoDB would probably make managing
the collection easier. But, I am grateful for what exists of course.

While watching the language certainly, I'm moving from Apache/mod_perl
to Dancer/Nginx for speed and memory reason.

Ok, back to lurk-mode,

Niels Larsen


> [OT, ADVOCACY]
> 
> I am partial to perl and CPAN, because there are just so many things I have been able to 
> do with them over the years at little expense to solve real-world problems.
> And despite the fact that I also use a lot of OO modules in perl, I just cannot get in 
> sympathy with a language like *****, where it seems that you have to mobilise a couple of 
> dozen classes (and x MB of RAM) just to print a date or so.
> Never mind the time spent trying to find their documentations.
> 
> As a matter of fact, when I am confronted with a new kind of problem, in an area where I 
> know a-priori nothing, my first stop is usually not Google nor Wikipedia but CPAN, just to 
> read the documentation of the modules related to that area.  Whether you need to parse 
> text, to process some weird data format, to talk to Amazon, to make credit-card payments, 
> to dig out and generate system statistics, to understand how SOAP works, to drive an 
> MS-Office program through OLE (and know nothing of OLE to start with), create a TCP 
> server, convert images, read or create and send emails, or whatever, you always find an 
> answer there. Even if in the end it turns out that the answer is not something in perl, 
> there is so much knowledge stored in CPAN that it is a pity that it is only consulted by 
> perl-centric types.
> 
> [IDEA]
> Maybe creating a website named WikiPerl, containing just the CPAN documentation with a 
> decent search engine (KinoSearch/Lucy ?), would help restore perl's popularity ?
> 
> Or do we just keep that for ourselves, as the best job-preservation scheme ever designed ?
> 
> 
> Ooops. I was just about to send this to the wrong list...