Three Cheers for CPAN
Hello CoRecursive subscriber,
It's August now, and I have a new episode out:
CPAN
CPAN, The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, changed software development for the better, and the story behind its creation is fascinating. The episode also touches on my frustrations being a .Net developer and about two different conceptions of software development and how the battle between them played out in the software development communities.
There are monthly new stories about software supply chain attacks, open source exploits, and open source developers burning out, but very few stories about the power of open source communities. So while a historical episode, we also attempt to draw attention to and celebrate the world of open source packages that we all use and depend upon.
The Slow March of Progress in Programming Language Tooling
Since my last newsletter, I've also published my post on software tooling. This post initially started with the question: What has improved in software development that isn't a programming language syntax or semantic improvement? I asked myself this and many others this and got some exciting results. And I think people sometimes forget that the supportive tooling around a programming language becomes the new user experience.
The post showed up on hacker news, where it sparked some interesting discussions.
I've also written a relatively long introduction to Terraform. But really, the thing I've put the most effort into lately has been The CPAN Episode, so check it out and let me know what you think.
- Adam
Hi! I'm Adam Gordon Bell
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