Ah, ok.
I thought you meant something like advocacy WITHIN Perl, as in
advocating for specific technical changes on this list.
I agree that there is currently some difficulty advocating Perl outwards.
Adam K
John Adams wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Kennedy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Although I find it hard to understand what exactly you mean by top down
or bottom up advocacy
Bottom up: Sysadmins, DBAs, and developers convincing managers and architects
it's okay to use Perl. Students convincing teachers that Perl is an appropriate
learning language. I've done both those, and I've had some limited success.
Top down: Convincing CTOs and CIOs it's okay to use Perl. Convincing the ACM
recommend Perl as a learning language. I've never tried that, though I know of
one effort to do the former. I'm not sure how it turned out, though someone
else on this list might.
Advocacy is mostly people telling other people what to do.
That's the reality of the situation as it applies to Perl, and that's the
problem. For advocacy to be effective, you have to _convince_ people of what
they should do, of what would be useful to them, of what good it is. Telling
people is worse than useless.
My success in convincing people they should give Perl a whirl has been based on
showing rather than telling. When I demonstrate an effective use for Perl,
that's done some good. Not much else has, other than good manners, patience,
and all that jazz.
