Perl outreach

[Abigail]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 07:05:39AM +0000, Peter Sergeant wrote:
> 
> Great! Now, any ideas how we further Perl outreach?
> 


No, but that's mostly because I don't find it an interesting, or even
a useful problem to solve. In fact, this "we got to get more people to
Perl" movement that I've seen pop pu on a regular basis in the 17 years
that I've been doing Perl annoys me more and more.


I think the world good use more good programmers. Which language doesn't
matter. Quantity of programmers doesn't mean much to me. I rather have
a single good C, Java or Python programmer than dozen run-of-the-mill
Perl programmers.

I am [*], [**] a developer. I solve problems. At $WORK, it's all about
giving the customer a better experience. He gives jack shit whether
the site he's using is written in Perl, Java, or vi-macros. As long
as he gets his books from Amazon, search results from Google, hotel
reservations from Booking.com and naked people from a porn site, he
doesn't care how it's implemented. He does not care what's under the
hood. The language doesn't matter. The customer doesn't care whether
the code has been refactored. Or properly commented.

Booking.com is an enormously succesful site, but it isn't because of 
the language the site is written in. It's all because of the people.
Booking.com would have been succesful if it was written in a different
language as well.

Languages aren't important.

People are.


Abigail

[*]  Only partially now a days. Nowadays, I find myself enjoying much 
     more figuring out which problems are worth solving.
[**] In the 10+ years before I worked for Booking.com, I used Perl
     in every job I had, although I was never a programmer, nor was
     I hired for my Perl knowledge. I've always been hired because I
     was good (or perceived to be good during the interview) in fulfilling
     the company's need; not because I had mastered a specific trick.