Perl publishing and attracting new developers

[Adrian Howard]

On 19 September 2013 20:16, Avleen Vig <avleen at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Well hold on just a minute there. One of the primary reasons Perl got to be
> hugely popular is exactly because books like Programming Perl and Learning
> Perl spoonfed the answers to new users.
[snip]

I don't remember it that way. I remember Perl getting traction and
becoming popular and *then* Programming Perl and Learning Perl coming.
Along with a bunch of other books. Many of them terrible.

Publishers are in the business of making money. They *vastly* prefer
to sell to an existing market, rather than try to create one.
Technical books are a trailing indicator of interest, not a leading
one. I can't really think of any counter examples.

We already *have* good general books for introducing the relative
newbie to Perl. Programming Perl, Learning Perl, Modern Perl &
Beginning Perl all spring to mind. I don't think adding more is going
to produce more Perl devs.

Cheers,

Adrian
-- 
adrianh at quietstars.com / +44 (0)7752 419080 / @adrianh / quietstars.com
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