Perl outreach

[Peter Sergeant]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 11:13 PM, Abigail <abigail at abigail.be> wrote:

> Arguing which language is better seems to be as pointless to me as
> arguing which car is better, or which brand of hammer.
>

Sure. But that's pretty far removed from giving people compelling reasons
to try a specific car. Also: I suspect people interested in getting more
people to buy a specific model of car spend a great deal of time arguing
about which car is better, and how to make that argument compelling to
consumers.

People buy car A because it suits *them* better than car B (whether that
> a rational reason or not is irrelevant), not because it gives a better
> experience/mileage/whatever between random points.
>

People buy new cars because they're shiny.


> "Testing is better" or "Catalyst is a bit more grown up than Rails"
> are similar arguments Jeremy Clarkson and his friends are making on Top
> Gear to decide which car is the best. Joyful to watch, but useless if
> you want to buy a car that's useful for you.
>

Conveniently buying a car and trying out a new programming language share
are different in at least the outlay of thousands of
dollars/pounds/whatever. Perhaps this is a reason to avoid car analogies
when talking about programming languages.


> For me, the top two reasons I use Perl (and there really isn't a third
> reason):
>
>   -  It's good enough for most of what I do.
>   -  I'm just too damn lazy to learn a different language.
>

Great! Now, any ideas how we further Perl outreach?

-P