Better Perl

[Nicholas Clark]

On Sun, Apr 06, 2008 at 05:11:45PM +0100, Jonathan Tweed wrote:

> And a few which aren't:
> 
> * It's hard to hire good people and getting harder.

This is good people who know Perl, or good people generally?

> * You can't hire someone with the mindshare of ThoughtWorks to do  
> Perl consultancy.

This is tricky to change.
ThoughtWorks presumably likely to advocate Rails and Java. Are there large
mindshare consultancies advocating Python or PHP?

> Perl is a tainted language here and it's going to be hard to shake  
> that. As to how we go about fixing it? I don't know, but as a start:
> 
> * Proof that Perl works for other big companies.
> * Radically improved presentation and PR. I mean, perl.org?

What do you think is a good example of a site to steal, er, I mean flatter?

> * A community that isn't downright rude to newcomers (that doesn't  
> apply to everyone ;-).

There will always be bad apples. (And unfortunately quite a few of them are
on #perl). Is the Perl community noticeably worse than others?

Nicholas Clark