On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 12:23:04PM -0500, Greg London wrote: > > Chris Devers said: > > Advocacy *doesn't* work well. > > > But beyond keeping sites like that prominent, there's not really a lot > > that can be done, pragmatically speaking, that seems likely to help. > > This is the same "I can't see how it will work, > so it must not be possible" line of reasoning. > Just because you can't see an answer, > doesn't mean the bazaar couldn't come up with one. > > > > Adam's points are reasonable. > > > > I don't see why he's being attacked for voicing them. > > Adam gave an artificial either/or condition. > Either advocate OR write cool scripts. > But it doesn't work that way. Someone might > not be interested in supporting perl the one > way that you want to see everyone support it.
Adam game a very specific example - Autrijus' pugs code - that strongly supports the contention that cool code can be many orders of magnitude more useful in creating interest than any collection of talk advocacy. There have been people talking about certification for well over a decade now, talking more about it is very stale. Nothing is going to happen unless someone decides to actually work on making it happen. Not work on having someone else make it happen - that's been tried every year or so for that more than a decade. I'm sure that O'Reilly has been asked many times and has long since made a business decision that there was no value for them to instigate such a project (probably back in the dot com days when it was much easier to justify projects). Show them an accreditation program that has gotten a good start, and and good plan for the future, and community support, and they'll certainly be interested in working with you for publicity and publishing aspects. But you should consider the fact that no-one, during the past decade, has decided that this task was worth spending time on. Anyone who has been a significant competant Perl enthusiast for more than a couple of years has heard proposals for an accreditation program - *none* of them has decided to take up the challenge. Not even, so far, as an ACME::* module (although by having suggested the concept in this message, that, err, lack, might change). Perhaps *all* of the Perl experts of more than a couple of years standing are too foolish to have realized the value you might see in an accreditation program, but having yet another person tell them that it should be done is not likely to inspire them. So, if you want it to happen, you will have to start it going yourself, being prepared to do a lot of work alone. Then, if you have something to show the people can recognise as having real promise, you will get additional people wanting to help to build on your start. (You can also get this insight from looking at pugs: Autrijus did a huge amount in a very short time, and that success has caught the attention of many others. Some of those many others have joined with him on pugs, and have caught the inspiration sufficiently that even when he "takes a day off" to go to a conference, pugs still is growing quickly every day.) -- _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
