On Fri, 2005-03-04 at 07:02 -0500, James Linden Rose, III wrote:
> On Friday, March 4, 2005, at 01:10 AM, Aaron Sherman wrote:
> > If you want to talk about making Perl more popular, here are some ideas
> > ranked in order of how likely I think they are to succeed in terms of
> > large scale adoption.
> >
> > * Help make CPANPLUS work well with all extant package managers
> > * Work on Perl 6 / Parrot / Pugs
> > * Write documentation
> > * Review / suggest edits to existing documentation
> > * Lobby more large companies to formally support local user groups
>
> Wow, these ideas will generate so much more buzz than certification!
Buzz isn't the only way to support Perl. Each of those generates
different things:
* CPANPLUS - Better integration (platform bias removal)
* Perl 6 - New features, more power, less legacy (new users)
* Docs - Bring users up to speed faster (not that Perl lacks docs)
* Editing docs - Keep current users happy (user retention)
* User group support - Grass roots growth
> Actually, think about it. If certification causes so many people on
> this list to send their neurons into overdrive, perhaps if it was *out
> there* it would create the same kind of controversy
Good point, and funny though it is, if it worked that way, I'd be all
for it. Problem is CERTIFICATION doesn't generate this kind of
controversy, TALKING about certification does. Certification IS a win,
but only when it's part of a large organization coordinating many forms
of public "legitimization" of a language. Certification doesn't have to
be part of that (the ANSI track did it for C++), but it is a valid PART
of the process (look at Sun WRT Java).
> > as far as I've seen. We're just being very mildly
> > pragmatic.
>
> Indeed. Keeping Perl as an island of elitism, which certification
> would threaten to obviate, is a self-serving, self-aggrandizing,
> self-preservative instinct at its finest.
Nay nay! Push Perl all you like, I wasn't saying don't.
In fact, if you want certification to be a piece of it, here's an idea
for you (free of charge, I take no ownership):
Go to O'Reilly with the following:
* An "open certification license" which allows anyone to write
certification materials, and anyone who is approved for a
minimal fee to perform certification.
* An example certification track outline for Perl
* An outline for a Perl certification study book for the first
tier exam
* A proposal for the (perl-based, of course) automated test
administration software.
It has everything: cool open source tie-in, Perl, certification, big
name, etc.
Structure the certification the same way Java does: have a low-level
developer test that's very hard, but focused almost exclusively on
memorizing trivia. Then do a second tier that pushes you to learn how to
USE Perl and how to use it CORRECTLY. Then branch out into areas of
specialization with tracks for Web development with various popular
tools, systems admin toolsmithing, XS development, even internals
hacking.
Certification is not *bad*... Perl already has the single largest
drawback that certification brings: bad programmers use it. C++ has the
only workable defense against this: make the language so hard to use
that a bad programmer will fail, and even a moderate programmer will
produce unmaintainable crap.
Perl instead allows the bad programmer to produce unmaintainable crap,
and that leads to some truly horrendous code in the wild. That already
hurts Perl deeply, but if you want a truly accepting language, you have
to accept morons. Oh well.
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