Re: How to wake up the Perl community?

[chromatic]

in reply to How to wake up the Perl community?

You can try it with shock therapy in the hope some of the totally blind (and deaf) will awaken.

Because nothing works better than insulting the people who disagree with you! Forget listening to them and considering what they say; your best option is to berate them! They disagree with you—of course they're wrong! They probably don't even have reasons for their thoughts!

TIOBE is relevant

What leads you to believe that the people who believe things like TIOBE are interested in measurable facts instead of feel-good woo?

[curiousmonk]

What leads you to believe that the people who believe things like TIOBE are interested in measurable facts instead of feel-good woo?

Well I think because people who think TIOBE is right are in large numbers. Now regardless what TIOBE actually is, that's irrelevant to what it is perceived by majority of the programmers/business guys alike

When they say something is wrong with Perl or that its usage is going down, people believe them. You may not agree, but when such large number of people believe in it, the damage is already done.

[chromatic]

Well I think because people who think TIOBE is right are in large numbers.

How did you measure that?

If you're right, how do you think you will convince them to believe in something based on observable, measurable, and independently verifiable facts instead of mystical woo?

[Jenda]

No, I don't think thats the point. We are not supposed to explain (again) what's wrong with TIOBE! "observable, measurable, and independently verifiable facts" are irrelevant, let's find a way to skew the index to our favour. Lies, damn lies and marketing.

[curiousmonk]

... And people know what the correct facts are right? Or go in search of them? Or even know the sources to get them?

People believe in what goes in the news, and what is presented to them in a package from some source.

I've been predominantly working with Perl and other languages like Python and Java for almost 7 years now. And I can tell you. I've gone from seeing 'Perl is unmaintainable/noisy' to 'Perl is dead' to now managers asking me 'What is Perl?'.

I've been migrating Perl code bases to Java for years now. Right now I feel like those COBOL programmers stuck in the legacy code bases, wanting to gain a new skill to move on to and seek a new identity.