Neil Bowers is a long time Perl programmer, and has managed all sorts of developers, including Perl ones.

He is also a prolific Perl blogger who writes articles comparing 10-20 Perl modules that are supposed to do the same task. Offering a step in the direction of CPAN curation.

He is also the joint owner of a small bootstrapped Perl-based start-up company.

(41:29 min)

(In the the first 10-15 seconds the sound had some problems. Sorry for that.)

Download: mp3 (38 Mb) 41:29 mins

Some of the things Neil talked about:

  • Put links to competing / similar / complementary modules in the SEE ALSO section of your module.
  • Help other people to solve their problems to get a reputation for being helpful, being a good programmer. Helping other people is the best way to make sure you understand the technology. Try Perl on Stack Overflow. Questhub is a good way to encourage people and to offer help and advice, without waiting for someone to ask a specific question.
  • Having a clear goal and thinking how to get from here to there. Breaking things down in smaller sized chunks, keep them on a list, or in Questhub.