Perl making people more POLITE (at least perl monks thinks so)

by greyman • 18 years ago

4 8 18 years ago

greyman• 18 years ago

This article talks about an interesting observation, that the behavior of people exposed to Perl (or any programming language for that matter) tends to be affected by it. I think there might be something to it.

learninglisp• 18 years ago

I like Perl hackers.

They do stuff... cool stuff... even lispy stuff... but they remain practical and relatively humble. The TMTOWTDI philosophy seems to have hardwired a certain degree of open mindedness in them-- they just don't appear to be as arrogant or argumentitive in the usual internet wars. Just an impression, YMMV, etc....

jrockway3• 18 years ago

The TMTOWTDI philosophy seems to have hardwired a certain degree of open mindedness in them.

I think you are spot-on here.

omouse• 18 years ago

It's not the language, it's the people.

m0nty2• 18 years ago

Maybe it's because Perl has never been fashionable, so you only do it because you want/have to, rather than make big money (Java) or make a fashion statement (H*skell, etc :^) It also has deep roots in Unix-land (I tend to find Unix hackers more friendly than Windows people).

Unfortunately, I've known many awkward, unfriendly and arrogant people who use Perl, such as that guy who used to literally shout and punch the filing cabinets if you went to him with a bug. Or the guy who took pride in writing obfuscated code and would never explain it clearly, even when you asked him. Or code snob who thought he was evolving into a being of pure light while us mere mortals cleared up his mess for him.

Perlmonks is a great site though. They've always been friendly and incredibly helpful.

jrockway3• 18 years ago

Actually, the Haskell community is a lot like the Perl community. And nobody uses Haskell to be fashionable, it's too hard to figure out for that demographic. The people that actually use Haskell use it because it's a good language and it's what they actually want to use.

I've known many awkward, unfriendly and arrogant people who use Perl

I wouldn't go this far -- but if you read the Perl mailing lists, you'll see that we are not lacking in the snide comment department. Basically, it's like everything else -- the people who are smartest have very little tolerance for everyone else, and they are happy to insult you as much as possible. (I used to be really good at this -- I could come up with a hilarious-and-hurtful remark for any situation. But I felt bad about it and cut it out. Being nice is good for book / class sales anyway.)

m0nty2• 18 years ago

> Actually, the Haskell community is a lot like the Perl community. And nobody uses Haskell to be fashionable

Point taken, but bear in mind that :^) indicates ironic or mischievous intent. I might as easily have said Erlang...

I don't participate in mailing lists but the Perl Monks have always been very helpful and patient when I've had a question, from the most basic to the more complex. The only time I got into trouble there was when I asked a question about optimizing a mailing list, and a large chunk of the audience thought I was trying to spam people. The fact that people do go there and ask "hey, how can I use perl to spam people" didn't help much... Anyway, I was eventually forgiven, with the help of a Monty Python quotation and some closely-worded arguments :)

Perl making people more POLITE (at least perl monks thinks so)

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