# and believe me, Perl is still alive... still alive!...

[Denny]

On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 23:28 +0000, Tim Sweetman wrote:
> > Although I think there are two further things that would help:
> 
> * A Perl user group that didn't just insult n00bs when they turned up

I agree with this very strongly.  In which context, can I call to your
attention that 'n00b' isn't generally meant in any complimentary light.
The words 'beginner' and 'newcomer' adequately cover what you probably
meant, without throwing in derisory overtones.

This is one of my little personal crusades, so don't feel too singled
out  :)

I really do think that Perl has already suffered very serious damage
from the way the middle-to-senior members of the community treat
newcomers - it almost put me off Perl myself, when I joined #perl on
freenode (linpeople.org then) about nine years ago and got insulted
about 200 times as much as I got helped.  Fortunately #linpeople were
much friendlier, and that's why I'm here now (and why I'm staff on
freenode now).  I suspect the prevailing attitude is why so many young
developers have turned to PHP over the last ten years - it's got a
community that welcomes experience-free beginners who need hand-holding
and help to find which of them have the potential to be good developers.

Yes, we're turning away all the script kiddies and other idiots.  We're
also turning away the 1 in 100 (or whatever) who could learn how to
write a properly designed large application - in any language.