David Ihnen wrote: > I think you've got it right there. We've got to get perl taught in > schools. That means perl experts need to be in teaching. And I have a > suspicion that perl doesn't appeal to the pure computer scientist very > well - these are the people who invented hard typed languages, after all. In the academia the general directive in choosing a language would be something to this effect: 1. teach modern language concepts, such as OO 2. minimise the learning curve by way of something easy to teach, easy to learn without having to figure out all the details of programming 3. introduce the students to a language that will make them attractive to the general market
You probably have a feel why Perl isn't a strong choice given these objectives. Perl was popular in the days when the people who go into software courses do it for the sake of pure interest. These are the people who are contented with Emacs or VIM, as long as they get to work with the codes. Half of today's CompSci students are people who stumble in because they haven't figured things out in life. The problem is made worse by Visual Studio and Eclipse. I remember how Java was a painful experience before someone finally put up a IDE that aids code visualisation and object description. My personal belief is that Perl MUST move with the times. It's an incredibly uphill task to change the market's mindset without a commercial budget. I place my bets on Perl6. It's regrettably a slow process, but it's the only sexy thing available on hand. > Pay them to do it in perl, and after they get through the learning curve > they'll probably be much happier with it. Half the developers aren't the type who can appreciate a good language. They can develop intensively for 5 years and they STILL haven't figured out what is Regex. Trust me on this! > Who cares? Hiding source code is valueless. You haven't met the China folks have you? :) There's outright protection, there's deterrance, and there's leaving the door open for every bad boy to muck it up.
