Things I Learned From Having Users

Dave Cross [email_address]

It's 10 Years Since I Got A CPAN Account

April 29 2000

Array::Compare 0.01

It's a pretty pointless module

Comparing arrays using a ridiculous algorithm

My second module on CPAN was Symbol::Approx::Sub

There may be a theme developing here

I now have 24 distributions on CPAN

Array::Compare AudioFile::Info AudioFile::Info::MP3::ID3Lib Audiofile::Info::MP3::Info AudioFile::Info::MP3::Tag AudioFile::Info::Ogg::Vorbis::Header AudioFile::Info::Ogg::Vorbis::Header::PurePerl Calendar::Simple Guardian::OpenPlatform::API Net::Backpack Number::Fraction Parse::RPM::Spec Perlanet Symbol::Approx::Sub Template::Plugin::AudioFile::Info Template::Plugin::RPM2 Template::Plugin::XML::Feed Tie::Hash::Cannabinol Tie::Hash::FixedKeys Tie::Hash::Regex WWW::Shorten WWW::Shorten::Qurl WWW::Shorten::Qwer WWW::Shorten::SnipURL

Most of them have tiny numbers of users

Having few users is good

Users are a problem

Users report bugs

Users suggest enhancements

Users expect you to listen to them

Writing unpopular modules is good

You can release what you want

You can release when you want

You can completely change the interface

(Users don't like that)

On the other hand

Users make suggestions that you would never have thought of

Users use your code in new and interesting ways

Users test your code for you

Users report problems

Users supply failing tests

Users write patches

Users are good!

Embrace your users

Popularity brings problems

Too many active users

Too many bug reports

(Why are you releasing buggy code?)

Too many bug reports

Too many enhancement requests

Use the tools

CPAN has a great infrastructure

Distribution is handled for you

Testing is handled for you

Cross-platform testing is handled for you

Bug tracking is handled for you

Every CPAN module gets its own RT queue

rt.cpan.org

Add that to your documentation

To report bugs in Perlanet, please use the CPAN request tracker. You can either use the web page at http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Report.html?Queue=Perlanet or send an email to bug-Perlanet@rt.cpan.org.

All bugs get automatically stored in RT

It won't work

AUTHOR Dave Cross, <dave@mag-sol.com>

To report bugs in Perlanet, please use the CPAN request tracker. You can either use the web page at http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Report.html?Queue=Perlanet or send an email to bug-Perlanet@rt.cpan.org.

AUTHOR Dave Cross, <dave@mag-sol.com>

Install the Redirect add-on for Thunderbird

Install the Redirect add-on for Thunderbird * Dave's Top Tip

Or use the bounce key in Mutt

Send your own bugs to RT

Use RT to remember everything you need to do to your modules

Use RT to remember everything you want to do to your modules

Some examples

Example 1: Moose

Moose is good

I started to Moosify my modules

Remember Array::Compare?

The module that no-one used

I got a bug report

Bug #49270 for Array-Compare: Remove the use of Moose

Padre project was unhappy

Moose was slowing their performance

I thought about it

I blogged about it

Other people blogged about it

In the end I did nothing

Source code is on Github

Feel free to fork it

Moral:

The user is not always right

Example 2: Net::Backpack

Backpack from 37 Signals

Personal information manager

With an API

Net::Backpack

It's a big API

I got bored

Release early Release often

Released a partial implementation

Someone found it useful

Sent a patch completing the implementation

Yay neshura!

Example 3: Perlanet

Perlanet is a web feed aggregator

Wrote it because I didn't want to hack Python

And Plagger was too complex for me to understand

So Perlanet is really simple

Too simple

Users have weird use cases

Users have unexpected use cases

Alex Kapranoff (kappa)

perlplanet.ru

Cyrillic

Кириллица

Lots of Unicode bugs

kappa didn't complain

kappa forked Github repo

kappa fixed the bugs

kappa sent a pull request

kappa++

Planet Iron Man

Originally used Plagger

Wanted to switch to Perlanet

YAML configuration

Simple

Doesn't scale

North West England Perl Mongers

Hackfest

Many improvements

More subclassable

Github pull request

Everybody wins

In summary

Writing software just for yourself is fun

Writing software for users is better

Seeing your software being used is great

Getting feedback about your software is great

Users supply bugs

Users supply patches

Users supply new ideas

Users supply insight

Users appreciate your work

But best of all

Some users show their appreciation...

By buying you beer

Things I Learned From Having Users

by Dave Cross

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