Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread John Saylor
hi ( 05.02.25 17:13 -0500 ) Greg London: So, if Certification convinces Mike to allow perl, and Eve isn't an idiot, it's an overall win. and if elephants had wings, they'd be the biggest birds by far. -- \js oblique strategy: ask people to work against their better judgement

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread Greg London
John Saylor said: hi ( 05.02.25 16:56 -0500 ) James Linden Rose, III: Certification for Perl will certainly NOT raise the intellectual bar of its practitioners, but it will certainly make many more people into converts on both the programmer and the manager side of the equation.

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread Ted Zlatanov
On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i still have my cert that i bought from them for my $2! it is all the perl cert i need. At the very least there should be a Perl hacker test (I haven't seen one). Here's a start... I'll be glad to maintain this (if there's been others, please let

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread Adam Turoff
On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 10:01:32AM -0500, Greg London wrote: From a game-theory point of view, I think certification is an overall win. The worst case scenario for certification would be that gurus have to get their manager to pay for them to take the test. The worst case scenario for no

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread James Linden Rose, III
On Monday, February 28, 2005, at 09:28 AM, John Saylor wrote: hi ( 05.02.25 16:56 -0500 ) James Linden Rose, III: Certification for Perl will certainly NOT raise the intellectual bar of its practitioners, but it will certainly make many more people into converts on both the programmer and the

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread Greg London
Adam Turoff said: On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 10:01:32AM -0500, Greg London wrote: From a game-theory point of view, I think certification is an overall win. The worst case scenario for certification would be that gurus have to get their manager to pay for them to take the test. The worst case

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread Sean Quinlan
On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 11:16 -0500, Adam Turoff wrote: The number of Perl job openings today, during the boom, or during the bust is largely irrelevant. Java was supposed to be the programming languages to end all programming languages. It wasn't then, and it isn't now. Interestingly, the

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread Bogart Salzberg
On Feb 28, 2005, at 11:18 AM, James Linden Rose, III wrote: they could then use their certified credentials to suggest Perl for real world problem solving. How about an intermediate step: self-testing. For example, one of the non-corporate Perl sites could set up a free automated test. Users

[Boston.pm] perl6/pugs

2005-02-28 Thread Benjamin Kram
Has anyone had a chance to play with pugs? I just svned down a copy and was going to toy with it a bit. cheers, b -- it would be horrid to be robbed by the wrong kind of people -archy Don Marquis, the big bad wolf, 1935

Re: [Boston.pm] perl6/pugs

2005-02-28 Thread Aaron Sherman
On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 12:51, Benjamin Kram wrote: Has anyone had a chance to play with pugs? I just svned down a copy and was going to toy with it a bit. Only a little bit. I am, however, sure that the correct way to boost the popularity of your favorite niche language is to write a compiler /

Re: [Boston.pm] perl6/pugs

2005-02-28 Thread Kenneth A Graves
On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 13:32, Aaron Sherman wrote: On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 12:51, Benjamin Kram wrote: Has anyone had a chance to play with pugs? I just svned down a copy and was going to toy with it a bit. Only a little bit. I am, however, sure that the correct way to boost the popularity

Re: [Boston.pm] perl6/pugs

2005-02-28 Thread Ben Tilly
Ruby is easier for Perl people to get into than Haskell. By the same token, learning Ruby will expand your horizons less than Haskell. Which is preferable depends on your point of view. Cheers, Ben On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 13:49:59 -0500, Benjamin Kram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I just grabbed

Re: [Boston.pm] perl6/pugs

2005-02-28 Thread Gyepi SAM
On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 01:40:35PM -0500, Kenneth A Graves wrote: I haven't gotten around to playing with Pugs yet, but I did build Haskell this weekend. It's a functional-programming conspiracy. It must be: I am using LISP, after a long hiatus, and really liking it. I simply did not

Re: [Boston.pm] perl6/pugs

2005-02-28 Thread Benjamin Kram
On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 03:43:24PM -0500, Aaron Sherman wrote: On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 15:39, Gyepi SAM wrote: As I recall, there are quite a few cross language programmers on this list... I've never used cross, but I hear it's a great language. What do you use it for? Warding off zombie

Re: [Boston.pm] perl6/pugs

2005-02-28 Thread Greg London
Aaron Sherman wrote: On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 15:39, Gyepi SAM wrote: As I recall, there are quite a few cross language programmers on this list... I've never used cross, but I hear it's a great language. What do you use it for? It's most useful for stuff like Hey, you kids! Get off

Re: [Boston.pm] certification

2005-02-28 Thread Tom Metro
Bogart Salzberg wrote: How about an intermediate step: self-testing. Others have already mentioned Brainbench. 3 or 4 years ago I actually saw a few Perl programmer resumes with Brainbench certifications listed. I'm sure if a bunch of Perl people wanted to write a better test, Brainbench would

Re: [Boston.pm] advocacy

2005-02-28 Thread Tom Metro
Sean Quinlan wrote: I also strongly concur with brian_d_foy's goal of getting more people (including myself ;) publishing well written articles about Perl. I think getting more well-written technical articles, that just happen to use Perl, into general computing periodical is a great, unobtrusive

Re: [Boston.pm] advocacy

2005-02-28 Thread Ben Tilly
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 16:04:34 -0500, Tom Metro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sean Quinlan wrote: [...] If Amazon, Yahoo, Ticketmaster, etc. are already using Perl in a big way, then why not put effort into making that more visible? One way is through a silly button campaign. Built with Perl,

Re: [Boston.pm] advocacy

2005-02-28 Thread Tom Metro
Ben Tilly wrote: ...the next step would be getting the big name users of Perl to put [buttons] on their sites. This step is easier said than done. Absolutely. I thought of the reasons you list, but the counter argument is that a company would promote their use of Perl for the same reasons they

Re: [Boston.pm] academic use of Perl

2005-02-28 Thread Tom Metro
Adam Turoff wrote: - Another reason why Perl is a minority language is that it's not used in academic curricula. An interesting point. Sean Quinlan writes: I agree. I'd love to hear suggestions how to work on that. We teach some Perl at BU, both under the bioinformatics program

Re: [Boston.pm] advocacy

2005-02-28 Thread Tom Metro
John Tsangaris wrote: Is a group needed specifically for the promotion of perl? Might not be a bad idea. It could either be a sub-group of the Perl Foundation, or mirror it, with the focus on advocacy. But I don't think advertising would be an efficient way to spend the money. Instead spend it

Re: [Boston.pm] academic use of Perl

2005-02-28 Thread Greg London
Tom Metro said: A few years ago I hired an instructor to teach a group of junior developers OO programming. Next time you're thinking of doing this, shoot me an email. http://www.greglondon.com/iperl From zero-perl/zero-OO to basic OO-perl in about a hundred pages.

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread andrew burke
If I could write standalone programs for windows in perl, and be able to share those programs with my non-perl collegues at work without over head of them having to install perl separately, would work wonders for general acceptance of the language. I understand that I can bundled perl itself

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread James Linden Rose, III
From: James Linden Rose, III [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:42:06 PM US/Eastern To: Adam Turoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl On Monday, February 28, 2005, at 12:46 PM, Adam Turoff wrote: Another worst case for certification is that the community bifurcates

Re: [Boston.pm] certification

2005-02-28 Thread Aaron Sherman
On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 15:39, Tom Metro wrote: As others have argued on the list, as programmers we know certifications are pointless as a technical qualification, but we're not the audience that needs to be convinced otherwise. I disagree. A certification says that you have a certain

Re: [Boston.pm] GUI builders, support tools

2005-02-28 Thread Sean Quinlan
On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 16:39 -0500, Tom Metro wrote: I was skeptical that such things actually added to one's programming efficiency. My friend wasn't an IDE junkie. He spent plenty of years working on the command line and with text editors. His opinion was that these bits of automation

Re: [Boston.pm] GUI builders, support tools

2005-02-28 Thread Timothy Kohl
After learning Quanta for web development I'm much more interested in looking at improved coding tool for Perl. I've played with Eclipse a little, and intend to get back to it when I have a a couple tuits. I'm not interested in WYSIWYG editors. But here's something you basic text editor

Re: [Boston.pm] GUI builders, support tools

2005-02-28 Thread Darren Chamberlain
* Sean Quinlan sean at quinlan.org [2005/02/28 18:12]: [...] But here's something you basic text editor doesn't give you that I think Eclipse does. Function jumping (or whatever it's called). I'd _LOVE_ to be able to click (or highlight and meta-somthing, whatever) on a function or method call

Re: [Boston.pm] GUI builders, support tools

2005-02-28 Thread Bob Rogers
From: Sean Quinlan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:12:00 -0500 After learning Quanta for web development I'm much more interested in looking at improved coding tool for Perl. I've played with Eclipse a little, and intend to get back to it when I have a a couple tuits.

RE: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread John Redford
From: James Linden Rose, III Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 5:49 PM Subject: Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl From: James Linden Rose, III [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:42:06 PM US/Eastern To: Adam Turoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl On Monday,

Re: [Boston.pm] GUI builders, support tools

2005-02-28 Thread Mike Burns
--- Sean Quinlan mumbled on 2005-02-28 18.12.00 -0500 --- Function jumping (or whatever it's called). I'd _LOVE_ to be able to click (or highlight and meta-somthing, whatever) on a function or method call and have the editor skip directly to it's definition - even if it is from another module

Re: [Boston.pm] OT: O'Reilly

2005-02-28 Thread Federico Lucifredi
Hello fellow Mongers, I have a bookish request: does anybody have an editorial contact at O'Reilly I can exchange a few ideas with? I am cooking a proposal for them and I need a few tips here and there. Best - Federico _ -- 'Problem' is a bleak word

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread James Linden Rose, III
On Monday, February 28, 2005, at 07:41 PM, Ben Tilly wrote: What don't you believe? That there are rabidly anti-certification people? That many prominent Perl programmers are among them? If you doubt that, then I'll call you reality-challenged to your face and point you in the general direction

Re: [Boston.pm] OT: O'Reilly

2005-02-28 Thread Ben Tilly
I'd start with http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/intro.html. Cheers, Ben On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 01:52:29 +, Federico Lucifredi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello fellow Mongers, I have a bookish request: does anybody have an editorial contact at O'Reilly I can exchange a few ideas with? I

[Boston.pm] Bottom Up

2005-02-28 Thread Bogart Salzberg
An (improved) argument for a bottom-up approach to boosting Perl... A bottom-up approach does not directly address the issue at hand, Perl's reputation among important decision-makers. But as an indirect factor it may be more effective than the top-down buzz of a Perl Inside marketing campaign.

Re: [Boston.pm] certification

2005-02-28 Thread Bogart Salzberg
Tom Metro wrote: It would be a start, though I'm not so sure that Brainbench's web-based, open book tests are close enough to a certification to have the intended effect. A self-testing program *need not* suck. Here are four reasons why a home-grown testing program would be (could be) better

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread James Linden Rose, III
On Monday, February 28, 2005, at 08:03 PM, John Redford wrote: I am anti-certification. Why? To put it extremely bluntly: certifications are socialist. People who believe in certifications have the same naïf mentality as people who believe in socialism. This sounds like an opinion that's going

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread Adam Turoff
On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 02:40:10PM -0500, Greg London wrote: My worst case scenario assumed that programmers knew that perl was the best language for the job at hand. So, your analysis is limited to only those who accept that Perl is the best language for the job? Hm My point remains: if

Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl

2005-02-28 Thread Adam Turoff
On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 03:01:46PM -0500, Sean Quinlan wrote: The last time Perl had an upsurge in popularity, it was because Perl solved a new class of problem better than anything else. Might I suggest that the best way to increase adoption is to learn from our past successes instead

[Boston.pm] Certification

2005-02-28 Thread Greg London
I think I just figured out why this conversation is going nowhere. The pro-certification folks think that certification would help convince a non-technical manager to use perl for a project. The programmers would determine that perl is the right language for the job on a technical basis. The