In honour of the coming weekend (GMT not EST here) I'd like to volunteer Paul
for the "maintaining grace under pressure" or "surviving the lions den" award of
the week.
He's replied civilly and courteously to all manner of provocation following an
article which wasn't aimed at a perl-advocacy readership (I don't know about you
lot, but I discuss things differently in the pub on Friday night compared to
talking to the boss on Monday morning).
Amongst his achievements are
- rejuvanating some life into perl advocacy (this week)
- entering a room of strangers, some hostile, and responding without
retaliation
- sifting the wheat from the chaff (not vice-versa) when choosing what to reply
to
- avoiding generalising the anecdotal, or vice-versa
(This is not an attack on those provoking such responses from Paul, a lion is a
lion, and is no less for showing both teeth and claws as well as feline charm to
those who provoke him/her).
My own slant on this:
I make a point of trying to use a tool / read a book / etc. when I feel that the
"slightly above average user" of that tool exhibits skills or intelligence that
I admire.
Shoot me down if you will, but my reasons for being interested in Perl a few
years ago was that a few smart people (including magazines, gossip, etc.) told
me it might be interesting, nobody stupid told me the same. That's what made me
look in the first place.
As an experienced C++ programmer I avoided Java as the only people who told me
to look into it were those who's ability to differentiate between their arse and
their elbow was somewhat suspect. This may or may not have been a mistake, but
my time to look at new things in depth is limited, and I need some way to decide
what to examine further.
I glanced at Python a year ago, but most of the people telling me to look at
sounded like hype-sters or fools.
Incidentally, this is why I think a perl distrib including its own documentation
is A Good Thing, perldoc is really a work of genius (tip'o'the'hat to Knuth) and
should be emphasised more frequently. The first thing you see on installing is
the docs written by the people who've contributed - what a good way to decide if
it's worth taking any further.
I've had Learning Python on my desk for a few months, and a copy of Zope sitting
on my hard disk; I intend to look at both over the weekend and see what I can
learn. The language in which I apply it still depends on the job in hand of
course...
Cheers all...
Tim
_________________________________________________________________________
The information contained in this message is intended for the addressee
only and may contain confidential and/or privileged information.
If you are not the addressee, please delete this message and notify the
sender; you should not copy or distribute this message or disclose its
contents to anyone.
Any views or opinions expressed in this message are those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of WestLB or any of its affiliates.
No reliance may be placed on this message without written confirmation
from an authorised representative of its contents.
