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RIP: The Perl Journal
mbadolato writes "I'm surprised this hasn't been reported yet. Over at use.perl they're reporting that when the current issue of SysAdmin comes out, this will be the last installment of The Perl Journal. It's a shame. TPJ originally was stopped as a stand-alone, but was then included into Sysadmin. Now that's going too. We all owe a big thanks to all the contributers, and to Jon Orwant, for providing us a great resource in TPJ over the years."
Sorry.
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
I think perl needs a container much like tomcat is for servlets. *not mod_perl*
now we have .NET
All our journals are belong to Bill
I have not followed the magazine a lot, but I remember reading it back in 1996, or maybe 1997. Back then, I got the impression that there was some ( a lot ) volunteer effort behind it back then. Could they, like, open source it - and maybe minimize the financial risk involved to it, I understood that they have been making some losses because of it. They could eZine it, and see if it could fly again. Costs would be minimal, or zero to them, just giving out the brand, basicly. It's a shame if a classic like this just disappears.
Ha, whatever, this is obviously just more beaurocracy from Microshaft, trying to corner more of the Perl market in the northern territories, forcing out pioneers like Phlegm Software.
TPJ was a great magazine. I've still got quite a few issues, and I learned a lot from it. Sorry to see it bite the dust. :(
I really enjoyed this one.. any word of a replacement of some sort?
The Perl Review is exactly what you describe: a Perl journal, distributed only as PDF at the moment. The publishers hope to get it on paper one day, but they wanted to get it started., so the first 5 issues are already available.
Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em. (Terry Pratchett)
This is really sad. I've subscribed to TPJ since about issue 3 and have all the issues. The SysAdmin deal was welcome, but only to keep it alive.
:(
TPJ was such a valuable resource for me as a perl hacker. You learned so much from each issue and people always contributed interesting articles.
Seems like my 2 year subscription will now be for SysAdmin - something that I'm not really interested in
Perl is the expression of a comunity so an eletronic form with daily news/articles/forums it's more appropriate; of course you can't put a eZine on the tea table, showing your hosts that you're really involved on the tech thing, but that's are luxuries not real needs.
I don't suppose it occurred to anyone to *pay* for the magazine, did it?
Nahhh... better if they just give up.
</sarcasm>
Perl, barely legal, was found dead in Larry Wall's home this morning, wrapped naked in rope with a gag in her mouth. Truly a terrorist's icon, destroying the US economy with impossible to maintain code. She will be missed by GNU/Communists everywhere.
They could eZine it, and see if it could fly again. Costs would be minimal, or zero to them
.coms implode to know that ?
Lets see if that flys shall we. Costs for an eZine.
1) Hosting, dependent on load, lets say a basic package with minimal bandwidth $100pm
2) Time, upload, updated editing, Content Management, configuration. Lets say 4 days a month, effective cost of $200 a day. Sure people can help out, but it still hits the daily job
So we are already running at nearly a $1,000pm and we haven't even started trying. Bandwidth requirements goes up (a slashdotting a month should do it) and suddenly you are shelling out over 20k a year.
e != free, haven't we all seen enough
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
...and advertising revenue is directly proportional to the receptiveness of the target audience. An audience more impressed by colors and pictures - in other words, less so than by actual information - means more total advertising revenue, and more available revenue means more players in the market.
.NET, Visual Basic).
This is why you don't see many print periodicals for serious work tools (*BSD, Perl, GCC) and you see mountains of them for toys (Windows,
This isn't sad news. It simply means that the Perl community's priorities are where they belong.
Is a myth.
With Perl Journal gone, what will replace it ?!
I hope not ".Net Journal".
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
burn sulpher bearing coal that you have to knock down a lot of trees to get to and make yourself more dependent on foreign oil.
Blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought -Dennis Moore
KFG
First the money went..
$tpj =~ s/\$//g;
So two magazines merged..
.= $tpj;
$sysadmin
The advertising slump hit hard..
$sysadmin =~ s/ActiveState/Make Money Fast!/g;
And eventually they lost money merged together too.
$sysadmin =~ s/\$//g;
The arse totally fell out of the operation.
$sysadmin =~ s/.//g;
So they shut up shop.
exit;
mogorific carpentry experiments
I saw this story on www.signalnine.com2 days ago.
So does this mean that the IOPCC (International Obfuscated Perl Code Contest) is defunct? Reading the winners from that and trying to figure out what they do was something I always looked forward to each year.
Perhaps the reason that nobody has reported it is that very few people read it in the first place, and as such, very few people care.
This may also be the reason that they aren't going to be continuing with the journal in the first place, don't you think?
I doubt few people lamented the end of the Ultrix journal....
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
If you drink too much, turn it over to a higher power and join AA. You will be glad you did. You will save money too. Booze is a terrible money sink.
- Content was somewhat redundant, with perl articles in the Sysadmin section as well as the TPJ section.
- Only 3 or so real TPJ articles every other issue (at least it seemed pretty sparse) as opposed to the 8 or more in the old TPJ.
- Most damning, if Sysadmin treated everyone like they did me.... As soon as the two merged I was inundated with snail-mail spam. Eventually I figured out that some code on the address meant it came from Sysadmin, and I called and complained. They told me I could opt out, why was this a problem? At least I got opted out and the flow had slowed way down since then.
I had already renewed my subscription (boy do I regret that doubly now) but wasn't planning on renewing again anyway. Not because TPJ wasn't wanted, but because what I was getting in Sysadmin wasn't really TPJ any more, and Sysadmin itself isn't of any interest or use to me and they abused the relationship.7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Back in 1997 (I think) I tried to subscribe to TPJ. I mailed in a subscription card from one of the many O'Reilly books I had and waited. I never heard back from them and soon forgot about it. The following year, I remembered and sent them an email asking about subscriptions. Their terse response was: "If you really wanted a subscription you would have sent payment with your subscription card." I asked why they hadn't sent me an email as I had included my address. Their response: "We don't do that."
Well, I thought that was pretty (poor|arrogant), and I never did subscribe. RIP TPJ.
I cancelled because 1) It costs too much... 2) Has few issues. 3) Has little content. 4) Has more advertising that content. 5) LinuxJournal doesn't have any of these flaws and Rocks!! To bad for Perl
www.cgisecurity.com/lib
In case you haven't heard, O'Reilly will be compiling and publishing three anthologies of the best articles from the Perl Journal:
Games, Diversions, and Perl Culture
Web, Graphics and Perl TK
Computer Science and Perl Programming
If you've never read TPJ before (or even if you have), be sure to grab one of these books when they come out. TPJ set a high standard of quality, with articles that were intelligent, entertaining, and usually a bit quirky.
Any way to get ahold of old of TPJ? Maybe in CD?
She's a lazy airhead. She's run SysAdmin into the ground. Fire her, please. She's nothing but an affirmative action hire. Let her drink her martinis somewhere else. Gawd, is she stupid.
In Letters, a real sysadmin pointed out all the technical errors in merely one article in merely one issue of this execrable mess. All she had to respond with were some snippy comments about his spelling and attitude. Get rid of her, NOW.
CMP Media Management needs to quit hiring based on gender (that is, the slit between her legs) and start hiring based on ability. SysAdmin, what an awful magazine. At least Linux Journal got rid of that nitwit that put a naked person on the cover of a supplement. Try explaining that one to a boss!
but I first subscribed to TPJ about 18 months before its sale to EarthWeb. That sale seemed to be the beginning of the end. I loved TPJ and found that I often learned more from it than I did using either web pages or books. But obviously I must have been in the great minority. I'm still wondering why.
It does make me wonder though if any print programming magazines are doing well these days?
I'd really like to see a magazine that covers all of opensource programming. Perl, Python, PHP, MySQL, GCC, bash scripting, opensource libraries, opensource tools, free codecs, etc. Everything a programmer that develops opensource software or with opensource software could want and no commercial crap we don't want. Something like Dr. Dobbs but covering only opensource.
If it covers more topics it'll have a wider audience which in turn will give it more advertisers. SysAdmin is a good magazine but it really isn't programmer-centric or 100% opensource so there probably is room for another magazine out there.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
i liek poo
I buy SysAdmin at shops because the mail delivery here is atrocious; I've tried subscribing to magazines in the past and it never has worked. I was annoyed at the diminishing page count in SysAdmin. The Perl Journal and Elizabeth Zinkann's book review column were the main reasons I continued buying it. They dumped the latter at the beginning of the year and now they're removing the remaining reason. I'll still browse it and buy a copy now and then if it has a really superior article on some topic I consider vital but I'm no longer compelled to complete the set.