Re^3: Steve Yegge on how to build IDEs and improve speed of dynamic languages

[Erez]

I'm also not offended by the word script. The way I see it, as Perl people, we have two alternatives when it comes to language advocacy, one is to explain to everyone that using a "scripting language" means using a general usage, Turing complete, full featured language that can do any and all of the things other languages can, but because of its nature gives one a more expressive, more productive, more natural, flowing and powerful way of expressing himself in a way that allows for him to achieve more, sooner, or, to stop saying scripts and start calling it "programs".
Being a lazy bum that I am, I vote the second.

Perl has quite an awful PR. Despite being a dominant, stable, full-blown language, I keep noticing that everyone think it's a dying shell/Unix administration scripts language, and facts be damned. Terms and definitions are part of the issue. Larry's keynote title is also a part of the issue. Similar to the Free Software/Open Source altercation, it begins on a simple term disagreement (the double meaning of the word Free in English), and ends with a political and ideal schism between the two sides, that serves only the third party.

Someone might say that we should leave the marketing out of it. That we should put our effort in making Perl better, instead of suggesting that Perl 5.10 should've been called "Perl 6 Enterprise Programming Platform". I agree. On the other hand, I also know that Firefox's been gaining a lot of good PR since they decided to name FF 1.8 "Firefox 2", and FF 1.9 "Firefox 3". Some might say that the quality will eventually reign over the marketing. I would like them to explain PHP or Microsoft Windows (or developing with PHP on Windows).

I need to emphasise here, I truly believe that the Perl culture and its roots, that make it such a marketing nightmare, are also what make Perl great. This means changing one can only be achieved by changing the other, which isn't what I would like to see.
For example, despite the negative connotation that the word "hacker" has, and the tendency to point at JAPHs as an example that Perl is a write-only language, I'm not here to ask people to stop JAPHing. Mainly because I see them as a cultural way of celebrating the Perl language, and as a token of the hacker culture that spawned it. Nor am I against any of the other aspects of the Perl culture. In fact, what of the great things about Perl is that it's a language where you can create a "script" and a "program", an even an "application". It's important we emphasise this, if only to remind ourselves of that.

[chromatic]

I also know that Firefox's been gaining a lot of good PR since they decided to name FF 1.8 "Firefox 2", and FF 1.9 "Firefox 3".

You may be thinking of Gecko, not Firefox -- and did that trick work for Sun with either Solaris or Java?