Is there a compelling reason to use Perl that appeals to new
programmers? Other than resting on laurels or the arcane, what reason
do they have to pick Perl to build their new, overnight success?
I was working on a short literary work for a few friends of mine who
want to "get into computers" in order to guide them, pragmatically, on
how to determine what "computers" are, how to figure out what area your
interest lies, and figure out if education or experience is the best
route. One site I happened on through my research was codeacademy.com.
I love educational sites. You can learn PHP, Ruby, Python, and
Javascript there. If you are looking at Android dev, there are really
good tutorials on how to build with Java. iOS... well... I'm too cheap,
but I see pluralsights.com offers courses. Udemy.com has a couple Perl
courses, yay. No, really, yay! Because I see as much push for Perl on
the modern day "here are your options" sites as Cobol. I'm exaggerating
a little. But only a little.
There are two main ways for people to know about these things: 1) They
are told (education, community), 2) They find it themselves. And one
main reason they seek to know about these things: Money.
If schools are not pushing Perl, really pushing Perl, than the majority
of this effort is lost. You don't really hear about Perl from the
community unless you're in the Perl community. If there were 20 Perl
jobs to 1 Java job posted, that would be a definite communication from
the community that Perl is to be known.
So what's left? People find it for themselves. Again, why would they go
through the pain of learning something new? Money. They have a great
idea for an app/business/website/program/etc. How many people come up
with great ideas for business? Everyone does. I'm betting that not one
of you can claim they didn't have a good idea for a program (not
something that they were paid to figure out, but just sitting there
watching SyFy and it hits you). This isn't because you are a
programmer, it's because you are a human. Every mechanic (under 80),
secretary, cop, etc, I have spoken with all had a good idea at some
point. Even a software idea. An idea for an app, or a website. A
"wouldn't if be nice if there was a site where you could X" thought.
Sometimes, you get a person who thinks it's a really great idea,
believes in it, and begins the steps to making it a reality. Their next
question is how. Let's assume you are one of three groups at this stage
of how, a) You know nothing about computers but are going to learn to
get this done, b) you know about computers and a little programming, but
not enough to have language prejudice, or c) My language rocks and your
language sucks.
Of these three, how do they decide Perl, or any language is the language
for them? No, really... how?
Unless this question is asked and answered, Perl will become a language
of the past. We have a lot of people here who know the very deep
intricacies of Perl. They are expensive because they know how to use
Perl to build rocket ships and gun powder assembly lines. That is the
typical and expected trend. The more mastery you have over something the
more you get paid. I love Perl. I will forever be a "Perl Programmer",
though I work in PHP and recently C# again (funny how every release of
C# brings it closer to looking like Perl). When I was asked during my
interview what language I would use to build a tool for my own personal
use, the answer was Perl (I still got the job). That's because I have
worked with Perl since 1998. So, it's natural for me to use Perl for my
next project. However, I fall into the 3rd category (my language rocks).
Really, I realize every language has it's strengths/weaknesses, but if
it's web based, automation, or damned near anything I can shoe horn it
into I'm using Perl.
I'm not the one that needs to be sold. It's the hundreds of thousands of
people who, every day, have an idea, decide to pursue it, and have to
decide on technology that need to be sold. If they are not sold, then
Perl goes by way of the old languages that people still use because it's
legacy. Programmers become expensive and infrequent. Jobs become
intermittent.
This is where we lie. I, however, am no marketer. I've no experience
with marketing, methods, techniques, etc, so I have no idea how to
present Perl as a viable option. But it needs to happen. Unless Mike
the Mechanic with a great idea for a website can, on Friday, sit down at
his computer, choose Perl, and by Monday morning and without sleep, have
learned enough to have created a prototype of his website, the language
is in trouble. Not for our generation, but very soon following.
In fact, I just googled "how to learn perl" and was met with an entire
first page on tutorials filled with indexes of "arrays, subroutines,
scoping, etc". [To be fair, I did the same with other languages and got
somewhat similar results, but we are behind the curve on marketing, so
we can't simply say it's the same for all languages, it isn't, and the
presentation for Perl particularly, almost consistently, reads like a
text book) I think that may be part of the problem. I just watched a
video lesson today on how to program the kinect which broke down the
lessons to "capturing images" "recognizing the skeleton" "responding to
commands". It used C# for the api though it listed other languages that
could be used. However, you didn't hear about programming theory or
language internals. It was, "to do this, you write this command". The
majority of the population that has a great idea only wants to know "how
do I do x" not what an array is. If they learn an array along the way,
so be it. It's part of the solution.
I'd guess this may be a starting point. That the language be presented
as a method to solve a problem. Currently it's presentation is academic
and guess what? That's where people are using it. We need tutorials
and websites focused on "how to build a login", "how to build an add
item page", "how to save peoples information". They are looking for
solutions to their business problems, and I'm going out on a limb, but I
can't imagine Mary the Restauranteur who has an incredible idea on how
to build a website for restaurants is going to ever include the words
array, scalar, subroutines, or referencing in her search for how to do
that. Yet, on the first page of how to use perl results, that's all I found.
When Perl is viewed as a solution to someone's business problem or more
particularly, their business idea , then they will hire Perl programmers
to use that forward that solution. Right now, in the marketing sense,
it's only a language, not a way to make $500,000 a month with this new
website idea I came up with.
If I were to wager a method to do this, I'd say take the word "Perl" out
of the equation, just like the build with Kinect lesson did with C#.
Don't sell the language, sell the solution. Don't teach them arrays,
teach them how to build a login mechanism.
Anyways, that felt like more of a rambling diatribe than anything, so
I'll only partially apologize. :-)
-John
--
John Tsangaris
--------------
|417-208-9013|
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| Deputy Jasper County Sheriff's Office |
| Member Infragard, Kansas City Chapter |
| Member Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 27 |
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| 32° Scottish Rite, Valley of Joplin |
| Member Knights of St. Andrew |
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