Re: Need some Help with Advocacy re: Java vs. Perl

[Madeline Schnapp]

Oh BTW, this is a little off topic but germaine to the subject just the
same...I just read a wonderful little book which I highly recommend, The
Tipping Point : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm
Gladwell.  The book describes (with lots of fun examples) how seemingly
incongruous things become fads.  Ingredients?  Connectors and Stickiness.
Anyway, the concepts are highly applicable to Open Source technologies that
don't have marketing departments.  Check out the description and reviews on
Amazon.  A good read for anyone trying to create a sea change.

I must say that the above was a much better read than the articles I read
in the New England Journal of Medicine which describe quantitatively how a
disease goes from becoming acute to epidemic.  These formulas might someday
be useful if we ever want to try to numerically  predict which "sticky"
technologies might have a chance of breaking away from the pack.

--Madeline