in reply to Perl as Culture........
From coding in C for a bit before doing Perl I know that the C/C++ community (if you can even call it that) is very different than the Perl community. When I had a question about something in C/C++ I knew that I'd probobly have to find the answer on my own because I couldn't find any nice people to help me. Even on question/answer newsgroups the answers to my questions usually amounted to RTFM, or "you're too stupid to know this so why should we tell you?". With Perl I can hang out in the monastery and ask questions, talk to people, post code and just about everyone I talk to is helpful and nice. Also, Perl programmers tend to freely give away their work which is a very helpful learning resource for newbies like me. With the C/C++ groups/websites I've been a part of people tend to be much more gaurded about letting you look at their source code. (this is more true for Windoze programmers) I think one of the reasons I enjoy programming in Perl so much is that the community is so diverse and neat. Perl wouldn't be nearly as nice if nobody put their modules on CPAN and there weren't helpful sites like our wonderful monastery here. My conclusion: the community makes all the difference in how the language as a whole works.
Anyway, those are just the thoughts of another JAPH-to-be.
-Ben Jacobs (dooberwah)
one thing i can tell you is you got to be free
http://dooberwah.perlmonk.org
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