>Truly, I was simply looking for a way to advertise Perl as being something >serious in today's technology. Guess it's back to the drawing board.
I'm motivated to not let this die at the "certification sucks" stage, since perl popularity means more money in my pocket (and I'm assuming it is the same for most people on this list). I've recently been moved to C# which was a company decision. The decision makers chose this as they stated they have had a much easier time finding C# developers than Perl developers (their results have apparently come via responses to various local posting methods including perl jobs). And while people can argue that this isn't so, it really was for this one company (and this was mutliple postings over several years). I'm sure I could push back a little, but the general tide seems to be going that way and I know my efforts will be in vain. So... we all know perl can do what other languages can do and sometimes better (in the context of web languages of course). The question is, how to persuade the decision makers to make the right decision. I agree that a nice list of super corporations that use perl would lend some legitimacy to the language, but I don't think that will have the definitive effect we, or at least I, am hoping it will. Sure, certification would probably make executives pay more attention, but as we've seen by many arguments, certification is a waste. It's non-representative of actual skills, corporately biased, not 'monitored' enough, etc. So what to do then? I guess I am not that convinced that certification is such a crap shoot. Of course all these down-sides of certification are there, so is Java really a better language because its supporters were able to come up with certification program and pursuade executives to use the language? I think in talking about certification, the whole purpose gets lost very quickly in the geeks mind of "why waste the time if it's a waste of time?" The purpose of certification in the context with which it was introduced in this thread is not an added ability for us, the geeks, to judge other geeks to determine if they have met certain spiritual and linguistic criteria. The purpose of said certification was to pursuade executives who make language decisions that perl does have credibility behind it. If all these negative things about perl certification is true, then it is true for all language certification. Yet, someone recently got a job somewhere in this great union, or india, because they had certification. I don't mean to imply that a certificate is the only variable managers evaluate when hiring, but have you noticed that no matter how much more you may know than the kid who just got his Bachelor of Computer Science, unless you have that B.Sc, doors close? So, the Java certified get more jobs than the plain Java knowledgeable. Ok. Therefore we should not have perl certification because, why? The suggestion that we can pick up our certificates at the next meeting may not be far from what is necessary for certification to accomplish the originally proposed goal. I'm not suggesting you pay $5 and pickup your piece of pizza, a coke, and a certificate simply for sitting in on the session. But... it simply feels like people are thinking more like software engineers than executives. If not certification, what else could we do? I am interested in what the more experienced developers have considered to be a better method of increasing perl popularity than certification. Is a group needed specifically for the promotion of perl? Perhaps to raise money through events and such in order to turn around and advertise perl generally? There are dairy farmers who do that. Tourism spots tend to pool money in order to promote general spending in their area. So why not a Chamber of Perl? (I may be joking about the name but not the idea). Is an occasional radio or tv advertisement that bad of an idea that we shut that down too? Advertising works for Java, but it couldn't possibly work for perl, right? Remember, we are not trying to convince the smart people who already know perl is good. Our solid logic proving perl is the best and only choice for all things is in great need of viagra when placed next to the "hot" look and feel of the advertised or certified languages. If you have seen most executives, they don't drive the logical cars, they drive the hot cars, regardless of how illogical it may be. So let's hear it. Not accepting that perl is doomed to forever be the 'unpopular' choice, I'd like to hear from others ideas that would really work to raise general social/corporate awareness of the language. Sorry... I had some lint in that $.02... but I'm sure you'll understand. :-) -John -John _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
