[Sussex] The deathly silence?

[Geoff Teale]

> On Sun, 23 Mar 2003 22:25:07 +0000, Geoff Teale wrote:
> > The Python community is a good example, the people involved with it 
> > seem far less egocentric than C/C++ or Perl developers.
> 
> Obviously you and I have been around different groups of Perl 
> developers :-)

I imagine so.. I've never been into Perl enough to get involved heavily -
the impression I get is probably skewed by a vocal minority who post to
message boards and write web pages that basically say "look at me, I'm
really clever because I can take a simple task and write it in two lines
that are unreadable" - I've seen this a lot amongst C programmers as well
(it has a place, the obfusticated C contest is a joke, but often quite
impressive).  It annoys me because it basically amounts to masturbation, its
of little or no value to a development community.  I've nothing against
clever solutions, but they have to have a tangible benefit and if they are
difficult to understand they need to be well documented.  Most of the Perl
content I have found on the web has been of this kind (there are very
notable, high profile exceptions, of course), reading it feels much like
listening to an Yngwie Malmsteen album.  If you've never listened to an
Yngwie Malmsteen album then take my advice, don't unless you need to harden
yourself for possible torture!

I am very sure that 90% of Perl programmers (especially those who actually
do it for a living) aren't like that, but that's the way it comes across to
someone on the fringes of it.  My comment was really, that given that Python
and Perl occupy exactly the same space (in terms of there uses) the lack of
this attitude (even at a superficial level) in the Python community is yet
another reason why I still feel happier there than in the Perl community.  

A lot of the Linux / UNIX world can be like that - I think a lot of us can
be to drawn in to strutting around saying "look at me, look how clever I am"
when actually we should be saying, "how can I help you".  Just like the
Microsoft-bashing this is usually an unhelpful attitude.
 
> At the end of the day, people use different languages for different 
> reasons.

Of course, and I am sure that Perl is the best tool for at least one job -
enough people use it!

-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk
tealeg at member.fsf.org


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