At 08:51 AM 8/16/01 -0400, Chris Nandor wrote:
>Of course, I don't think highly of the business world in general, so I
>freely admit I have a bias, one that should be quite understandable to
>most people here. But the point still holds: with Perl as phenomenally
>successful as it is without telling businesspeople much about it, I
>don't see what will be gained by clueing them in, and I fear we have as
>much to lose as we have to gain.
I have something of a dual personality on this point. On the one hand I
believe in the niche argument I've been making here recently, which would
argue against the value of businesspeople interest.
On the other hand, if the interest in a language drops below a certain
level, it spirals down in acceptance regardless of how cool it is. My
reference for this is having encountered earlier in my career several
old-timers who were each expert in some language I had either never heard
of before meeting them, or had read with disgust. They would have a
reputation within the company for using nothing else, but nevertheless
being able to do anything in their wretched language, even though no-one
else could figure out how to make it do the most basic things. "Oh, you're
writing a recursive descent parser? I bet Bob over there could show you how
to do it in EXEC-8." "You bet! Here, watch this..."
My nightmare is of turning into one of those guys. Or, less personally,
that Perl will, unjustly, become one of those languages. While I don't
think this is an entirely rational fear, I have empathy for those who share
it. Managing perceptions is important, even if not as important as
managing technology issues, and I can understand people thinking that we
have the latter well covered but not the former.
>We all know that Perl is used in most places without telling anyone that
>it is being used. If businesspeople knew it was being used, they are as
>likely, or more likely, to order that it not be used anymore as they are
>to ask that its use be increased. Businesspeople are dumb like that.
--
Peter Scott
Pacific Systems Design Technologies
http://www.perldebugged.com
