Attention conservation: it's unlikely I'm going to say something
interesting you haven't thought of already.
A side-discussion that came up here: should you ask questions here, or
at stackoverflow (or both here *and* at stackoverflow).
I understand the argument that it's better to talk about perl in
public where non-perl might see it (to help counter that "perl is
dead" impression that's floating around). Getting more involved with
stackoverflow has been on my list for a long time... and yet I haven't
gotten to it. Why not?
(1) The barrier at stackoverflow to a beginner is probably higher than
you think it is-- it's not at all obvious what you're allowed to do
and what you're not at the outset.
(2) Stackoverflow is centralized, I don't know really who's in control
of it (and early on I had the impression they were a bunch of
microsofties). Email has the virtue of being federated-- or it would
be if we weren't all using gmail-- and if there's a web archive it's
also indexed.
(3) Stackoverflow may be "well indexed", but I haven't noticed this
being very helpful for perl6 where many things are huffmaned down
below the level where they can work as grep crumbs. E.g. "does" vs.
"but" and perhaps worse "=" vs. ":=".
(4) I've seen some complaints about stackoverflow moderators that
seemed all-too-familiar-- power tripping for the sake of it. They
seem to be a bit trigger-happy about shutting down interesting and
illuminating discussion ("this is all just matter of opinion!").
It's not at all unusual to do a web search on a question and end up at
a stackoverflow page that a moderator has marked as "Closed".
(5) I question how much it improves visibility to post perl6 material
at stackoverflow: there's so much stuff there very few people look at
the place as a whole: the only people likely to look at a perl6
discussion are the people who are already interested in perl6.
