At 7:44 -0700 2000.08.10, Madeline Schnapp wrote:
># of Amazon Purchase Circles containing books on "X"
>
> 1999 2000
>
>"X" = Java 183 359
>
>"X" = Perl 268 82
Well, over on Perl News, I post new Perl titles as they go up. It seems to
me that there are far fewer new Perl books this year than there have been
in past years. I'd think that might be a part of it; I am not going to
keep buying the same books over and over again. :-)
Also, many Perl people (including myself and MJD) started boycotting Amazon
late last year, too. I imagine that phenomenon would be stronger with Perl
users than with Java users. So it depends on who is involved in these
purchase circles, too. Corporations like Java, not Perl. Why? I
personally don't care why, but I imagine it is because of the buzzwords and
the cool looking widgets and the fuzzy feelings people get about object
orientation. Since I am not interested in Perl conquering the world
financially, it doesn't bother me, as long as Perl is still conquering the
world in other ways.
Of course, you do care about that, since you're in marketing (I don't know
what "marketing" means, except I know it has something to do with money).
>We are tracking several indicators and some of these indicators seem to
>suggest that the popularity of Perl is not growing as fast as it has been
>in the past. My theory is that Java is becoming much more ubiquitous, and
>this is occurring at the expense of Perl (and also perhaps all of the other
>OS languages but I can't say that for a sure.....yet).
I'd think it is more of a factor that for awhile, some very interesting and
important Perl books with widespread appeal were coming out, and now that
isn't as much the case. Why does there seem to be fewer books recently?
Maybe it is because there hasn't been much to publish about. I mean, we
have algorithms, we have the cookbook, we have regexes, we have objects, we
have the Camel. Most of the bigger bases are covered. The niche books are
still coming, and many of them are good, but they aren't going to be as
widely bought.
Now that Perl 5.6 is becoming more widely used, we'll see new editions of
books (like the Camel and the Hip Owls). Will that reverse the trend? I
don't know; right now, it seems core perl development isn't as active as
core Java development (excluding Perl 6, for which there is little to write
about for a book).
I don't know that this is a bad thing, though I know some will disagree.
You don't see many C books published, either, and it is still widely used.
There just isn't much left to say about C. For Perl, that clearly isn't
the case, but it may be that it is more the case with Perl than with Java.
--
Chris Nandor | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://pudge.net/
Andover.Net | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://slashcode.com/
