Re^8: The Future of Perl 5

[woolfy]

I also wrote this: "It may even sound unbelievable to you, but nowadays we are even getting compliments because of the good things that happen with both Perl 5 and Perl 6 and the nice marketing stuff we hand out and the positive vibes that come out of all our volunteers at such conferences."

People can indeed be bothered to say something, and when they don't say negative stuff but very nice positive stuff, we are winning again. Both Perl 5 and Perl 6. Both instances of this year's (oh, of course also last year's) The Perl Conference (Salt Lake City and Glasgow) had a lot of newbies, they had a good time, gave the conferences good vibes, and even gave nice and interesting talks, also about completely new products, and new companies starting to use Perl. At non-Perl events, it is nice to hear about this as well, and about former Perl-users coming back to Perl, because Perl is interesting again. It could all be much better, but it could also be much much worse.

[LanX]

Wendy, you and Liz are very active and public members of the Perl community.

Liz published dozens of modules, you two are practically at every conference or workshop and co-sponsoring events.

BrowserUK OTOH is practically anonymous. Nobody here knows who he is, if he ever released modules, blogged or attended conferences.

He probably prefers to stay anonymous, because an notable percentage of his contributions here are emotional outbursts and personal attacks using foul language. But his "real life" reputation can't be damaged, unlike yours.

He is though somehow respected for the huge number remaining technical postings, especially in the field of tuning Perl for speed. Resulting in a high XP-rating. (his Dr Jekyll side if you want)

But most of the regulars stopped going into lengthy fights with Mr Hyde.

I'm telling you this because you weren't that active here in the past.

So better think twice who you are feeding instead of relaxing (and enjoying your whiskey. ;-)

[woolfy]

LanX, thank for your kind words. The words towards BrowserUK are quite harsh and I am not sure I agree. I have often ++ their posts, because of the technical skills and the enormous help to other people (and I still ++ their posts when it comes to technical help to others).

When it comes to Perl 5, I still often direct people to PerlMonks when they have technical questions, need help with a project, or to learn things, because PerlMonks is an awesome place to read and learn, to write and educate, to meditate, and sometimes to have fun. My reactions this year are not so much "feeding" the persons I react to, but more aimed at other people who might not know the other side. The other side is that many people and many companies still use Perl, that new projects are still started, and that the image of Perl has been changing for the better in the past 5 years. If I don't mention such things, who would? There are not that many other people who do.

[LanX]

I was mainly reacting on Re^9: The Future of Perl 5.

In general I'd prefer a less emotional discussion.

I'm not an angel if it comes to provocation, but all the vitriol from both "sides"° is starting to frustrate me.

and I don't want others to get more frustrated.

°) Truth is there are too many sides. Some want Perl to be more like Python...

... other more like C or Smalltalk or Ruby or Go or Lisp ...