-----
title: "A pizza with Randal Schwartz"
content-type: article
subtitle: "Talking about open source, programming, emacs and technical writing"
popular: true
timestamp: 1289738129
tags: "opensource|programming|italy"
pdf: true
-----

<section class="section">
	<p>I am an avid <a href="http://twit.tv/FLOSS"><span class="caps">FLOSS</span> Weekly</a> listener. Sometimes I may
		fall behind by a few episodes, but I normally manage to catch up: Randal Schwartz' show is by far my
		favorite podcast.</p>
	<p>You can imagine my reaction when I discovered that Randal was in Genoa, my city, ready to leave for yet another
		<a href="http://www.insightcruises.com/">InsightCruise</a>: I had to meet the guy, at all costs!
	</p>
	<p>It turned out to be easier than I thought: I simply <a
			href="http://twitter.com/#!/h3rald/status/28962418438">asked him</a> if he fancied a pizza out on the way
		back from his cruise, and he said yes.</p>
	<p>I also decided to invite <a href="http://www.agilesensei.com/">Claudio Perrone</a> as well, seeing that
		he's back in Genoa on one of his Agile/Lean gigs. He said he didn't know much about Perl, but
		he'd have liked to come as well. So there I was lining up a dinner out with two IT gurus at the same time.
	</p>
	<p>Randal was staying at the <a href="http://www.hotelbristolpalace.it/">Bristol Palace Hotel</a>, and we met him at
		the lobby bar. In the end I persuaded my wife to come along as well, although she doesn't know much about
		Perl either.<br />
		We shook hands with Capt. Neil [Bauman, of InsightCruises.com] and a few others of the cruise gang, then we were
		off to the restaurant.</p>
	<p>It only took five minutes to realize that Randal was exactly like he sounds on his show: cheerful and chatty,
		eager to talk about technology and science. When you meet famous people face-to-face, there's always a
		chance that they are not nice at all, but luckily this wasn't the case: within minutes Randal was telling
		us all about <a href="http://news.motionx.com/category/motionx-gps/">MotionX-<span class="caps">GPS</span></a>
		(a very neat iPhone app that I highly recommend) like we had been buddies for ages.</p>

	After a rather bumpy bus ride (Italian evening drivers are well known for this), we got to <a
		href="http://www.ristorantepiedigrotta.it">Piedigrotta</a>, ordered some pizzas, and started talking. Little did
	we know that Randal loves talking and sharing stories about almost anything: we were chatting non stop for hours,
	and after dinner my wife and I invited everyone up to our place, to continue talking happily in front of a glass of
	our wine and... freshly-microwaved popcorn.

	Here's what we talked about, organized by topic for your convenience. I didn't record the conversation even if it
	would have made a hell of a show, but I'll do my best to quote him as faithfully as I can remember or paraphrase him
	without changing the meaning of his words.

	<aside class="important">
		<span class="note-title">Important</span>Randal, if you're reading this and you come across any misquotation,
		please let me know so I can amend them!

	</aside>


	<section class="section">
		<header>
			<h3 id="h_1" class="toc">Something more about Randal</h3>
		</header>
		<p><a href="http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/">Randal Schwartz</a> is a world-famous Perl guru, author of the <a
				href="http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/335">best Perl programming</a> on the market, and a very prolific
			<a href="http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/columns.html">column writer</a>.
		</p>
		<p>Randal is not a full-time writer though (<q>&#8220;writing books doesn't pay&#8221;</q>). His day job
			consists in being a &#8220;guru on-demand&#8221;: you can hire him to fix your code, refractor complex
			enterprise applications, or simply provide useful advice to IT managers. <br />
			Being the host of <span class="caps">FLOSS</span> Weekly is not a job, and Randal doesn't do it for
			the money of course, but for passion: <q>&#8220;I'm trying my best to do one show per week, even when
				I am away&#8221;</q>, he said, and he does go off traveling around the world a lot!</p>
		<p><q>&#8220;Once I was at home for 8 weeks and it felt really strange. I kept thinking I had to pack to go
				somewhere else&#8221;</q>. He's been on nearly every Geek/Insight Cruises (51, if I remember
			correctly) and his <a href="http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/dot-plan.txt">travel plan</a> is always very
			busy.</p>
		<p>I was extremely lucky to catch him on the way back from one of the few cruises in the Mediterranean! It must
			be a sign of some sort.</p>

	</section>

	<section class="section">
		<header>
			<h3 id="h_2" class="toc">Open Source</h3>
		</header>
		<p>I have always tried to raise awareness about Open Source and Free Software among my friends, co-workers, and
			even managers. Sometimes it's easy to make people realize that Free, Libre, Open Source Software
			matters, other times is much harder.</p>
		<p>When Randal got half way through his pizza, I asked him if he had any tips on open source advocacy and on
			overcoming corporate resistance. I explained that the main concerns I get when I talk about open source in
			an enterprise environment are:</p>
		<ul>
			<li>the cost or support/training</li>
			<li>the immaturity of the product and fear of it being abandoned at some point</li>
			<li>overall, a high Total Cost of Ownership</li>
		</ul>
		<p>Randal was almost laughing at one point: <q>&#8220;why are people concerned about paying for support for open
				source software? Don't they pay it already for proprietary applications?&#8221;</q>, also
			<q>&#8220;the chances for open source software being discontinued are the same, if not lower, than
				proprietary software. Plus, proprietary software often forces compulsory upgrades, and similar things
				that can eventually damage your business&#8221;</q>. Additionally, if I may add, in the unfortunate case
			that an open source project is abandoned or turns nasty, it is often forked, so at worst you always have the
			source code anyway.
		</p>
		<p>Randal also pointed out that what really matters about an open source project is the community built around
			it. He mentioned that the <a href="http://www.mongodb.org/">MongoDb</a> guys that came on <a
				href="http://twit.tv/floss105"><span class="caps">FLOSS</span> Weekly #105</a> were really enthusiastic
			of having embraced open source. Unfortunately, some projects just don't seem to get the whole idea
			behind open source at all: <em>community</em> vs. <em>enterprise</em> editions always makes me suspicious,
			and Randal agreed to an extent.</p>
		<p><strong>In a nutshell, Open Source is not about the company or the license, it's about the people and
				the community behind a project.</strong></p>
		<p><q>&#8220;You should [re-]listen to one of my very first podcasts, the one with
				&#8221;http://www.webmink.net/&#8220;&gt;Simon Phipps</a>, the former Chief Open Source Officer at
				Sun&#8221;</q>, Randal told me in the end, and he's right: <a href="http://twit.tv/floss39"><span
					class="caps">FLOSS</span> #39</a> is a must for anyone truly interested in the subject.</p>
		<p>Seeing that Randal seemed to be perfectly happy to play with his iPhone, I went for the obvious question and
			asked him what he thought about Apple, and at the same time Claudio asked him what was his operating system
			of choice.</p>
		<p><q>&#8220;OS X&#8221;</q>, admitted Randal, <q>&#8220;I use what gets the job done&#8221;</q>. In all things,
			there's no point in being an extremist for the sake of argument, and being an open source advocate
			does not mean that you have to condemn every piece of proprietary software (at this point, Richard Stallman
			would have thrown up his pizza, had he been there &#8212;but he wasn't).</p>
		<p><q>&#8220;From a <span class="caps">GUI</span> point of view, Apple is still ahead of the competition: if
				others want to win, they have to come up with something better, and different. [&#8230;]Ubuntu is
				getting there, but not quite yet.&#8221;</q></p>
		<p>Randal also pointed out the importance of contributing to open source projects: <q>&#8220;you don't
				have to code, you can just provide feedback, submit bug reports, write documentation, or test&#8230; I
				am the one who checks if git builds on a Mac, for example&#8221;</q>.</p>

	</section>

	<section class="section">
		<header>
			<h3 id="h_3" class="toc">Programming</h3>
		</header>
		<p>Programming was another major topic of our discussion. Randal, after all, is a living Perl legend having
			written 6 Perl books and over 250 magazine columns. Unfortunately I don't know much about Perl, and
			neither does Claudio. I am quite open-minded about languages&#8212;although I am slightly favorable towards
			Ruby&#8212;so I enjoyed every little bit of the discussion anyway.</p>
		<p>Most of the discussion was about Perl 6, which was recently featured on <a
				href="http://twit.tv/floss140"><span class="caps">FLOSS</span> Weekly #140</a>. After listening to what
			Randal had to say about it, I am definitely going to try it out at some point (hopefully skipping Perl 5
			altogether). <br />
			<q>&#8220;We [Perl programmers] say that Ruby is an alpha version of Perl 6&#8221;</q> said Randal, joking
			about the similarities between the two languages and the amount of time it took to come up with a working
			Perl 6 (which to date is still unfinished). He reckons Perl 6 will be used in production for small and
			medium projects within a few months, and he's going to write a book about it.
		</p>
		<p>He then briefly described what makes Perl 6 so special. The top feature we were talking about was grammars:
			the language offers the possibility to create grammars to parse other languages and even Perl 6 itself.
			Moreover, the Rakudo implementation running on the Parrot VM aims to implement the full Perl 6 specification
			in Perl 6 itself <q>&#8220;[&#8230;] therefore, at run time, a program is able to access the its syntax tree
				itself&#8230;&#8221;</q>, he said, while playing with an imaginary Perl 6 parse tree in the air.</p>
		<p>We then moved on to Smalltalk, and both Claudio and I asked him a few questions about it, in particular about
			the whole concept of <em>image</em>, particularly in reference to the Squeak implementation. We observed how
			many programmers of other languages (Ruby included) end up going back to the origins (Smalltalk) and how
			Smalltalk is far from dead. <q>&#8220;It's only a matter of getting used to it&#8221;</q>, said Randal
			when I asked him how to work with a Smalltalk image and how to distribute it, <q>&#8220;you program as you
				would in any other language, you can communicate with the rest of the world just fine. What you get in
				Smalltalk that you don't get in most other languages, is the ability to inspect and work with the
				underlying source code of the objects at run time, thanks to the amazing reflection features the
				language offers&#8221;</q>.</p>
		<p>At one point I had to asked Randal what he though about Haskell, having tried to learn it three times without
			succeeding: <q>&#8220;I have tried <em>ten</em> times to learn it myself, with no luck&#8221;</q>, he said.
			At least I'm not alone!</p>
		<p>The discussion then shifted towards tools, and then of course text editors. I just had to remind him that I
			am a Vim guy. Randal looked at me smiling, and said: <q>&#8220;That's fine. You <span
					class="caps">WILL</span> join us. Sooner or later you will join us&#8230; join us&#8230;&#8221;</q>.
		</p>
		<p>Randal's involvement in Emacs dates way back to the end of the 80s, and he has been using it ever
			since. He even contributed to it, back then, by writing pp.el, the pretty printer module.<br />
			<q>&#8220;I posted my code to the emacs mailing list, and Richard Stallman himself replied asking if he
				could include my code in Emacs. If you read Emacs acknowledgements, I'm there as well&#8221;</q>,
			said Randal, proudly.
		</p>
		<p>I confess I almost felt the urge to give Emacs another try. I often get hyped up about things like this. If I
			had received such a reply from Richard Stallman, I would have probably sworn not to touch the Editor of the
			Beast ever again.</p>
		<p><q>&#8220;Just try out Org mode. I didn't know it very well myself until I had a show about it, but now
				realize why people should always load up an Emacs instance just to run Org mode.&#8221;</q>, said Randal
			again, talking about yet another <a href="http://twit.tv/floss136">recent show</a>.</p>

	</section>

	<section class="section">
		<header>
			<h3 id="h_4" class="toc">Technical Writing</h3>
		</header>
		<p>After our pizza, we all went back to my place, which is literally around the corner for the restaurant. It
			was only when we were happily starting the second glass of my family's very own home-made wine that
			Randal looks at me and says: <q>&#8220;You know that I started off as a Technical Writer myself, don't
				you?&#8221;</q></p>
		<p>I was baffled. I did brush up on Randal's life on his web site, Wikipedia and similar, like any good
			fan meeting his hero, but I never came across this tiny detail. This triggered yet another round of
			questions on my part, as I have been working full time as a technical writer for years now. Randal shared a
			couple of anecdotes about his early technical writing career.</p>
		<p><q>&#8220;When I joined, I had a boss called Lyle. He used to say that the manual itself is <em>the</em>
				product. If it's not in the manual, it simply doesn't exist for the customer.&#8221;</q> A
			statement that can come handy as as a reminder for Product Managers, Project Leaders and similar when they
			try to belittle documentation, and for writers themselves, when they feel that they can be sloppy because no
			one cares.</p>
		<p>I really enjoyed when Randal told us about his first encounter with his editor, Jack:</p>
		<blockquote>&#8220;He was a big guy. 6 ft tall, with huge hands. He used to hold his pencil like this&#8230;
			[shows a fist grabbing a pencil] &#8230;he starts reading my first draft and crosses a word, then a
			paragraph, and another, and so on. Then he looks at me and says: &#8216;OK, what did you <em>really</em>
			want to say here?'<br />
			<br />
			I said &#8216;Well, that you set option -s to enable <span class="caps">XYZ</span>', and he starts
			writing down on my document &#8216;Set option -s to enable <span class="caps">XYZ</span>&#8230;', and
			so on.&quot;
		</blockquote>
		<p>When you start as a Technical Writer, you often end up writing a lot trying to be thorough, making even
			really simple things complicated. Jack reminded me of a great editor that was hired at my company for a
			summer, and revolutionized the whole department by applying some principles and vocabulary of <a
				href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_English">Simplified English</a>. As it turns out,
			instructions written in a plain and simple language are far easier to understand than anything else.</p>

	</section>

	<section class="section">
		<header>
			<h3 id="h_5" class="toc">Wrapping it up</h3>
		</header>
		<p>We spent the whole evening talking non-stop. We met at his hotel at 7:30 PM and I drove him back around 11
			PM. The guy does talk a lot. Luckily, I got a chance to take a couple of pictures and get a funny
			autographed note, as long as I promised not to use it for cheques, that reads: &#8220;To Fabio, without whom
			this note will make no sense&#8221;.</p>
		<p><img src="/images/pictures/rls/rls1_small.png" style="float:right;" /></p>
		<p>There's obviously a lot of stuff we talked about that I didn't write about, mainly because I was
			trying to keep this article focused on IT-related topics. Before his cruise, Randal visited the <span
				class="caps">CERN</span> in Geneva, so for a good half hour we talked about the <span
				class="caps">LHC</span>, experiments, neutrinos being shot from Geneva and collected in Rome, things
			like that.</p>
		<p>We also talked a lot about Randal's day job, then about his company <a
				href="http://www.stonehenge.com">Stonehenge.com</a>, then his trip to England (and to the real
			Stonehenge); and we talked about Italy, both about good things (food?) and bad things (bureaucracy,
			backwards mentality mainly in relation to IT, lack of English speakers, etc.).</p>
		<p>The evening couldn't have gone better. Especially considering Randal and I don't agree on some
			<span class="caps">EXTREMELY</span> important matters (programming languages and text editors). It was a
			great chance to learn from each other. I doubt he will be ditching Perl in favor of Ruby, but at least I
			hope to have made it very clear to him that Ruby is much more than Rails, at least for some of us.
		</p>
		<p><code>sudo apt-get install emacs</code></p>
		<p>Damn! Wrong terminal. Sorry about that&#8230;</p>

	</section>

</section>