Every time I read /. I remember why I don't read /.
The review of Learning Perl has the same responses that every other mention of Perl gets. Don't those kids ever get tired of talking about things they say they don't like and will never use?
Another large segment of responses complain about Perl 6, but in the same fashion as the complaints about Perl 5.
The most surprising posts I've seen (on /. or anywhere) complain that the new edition is insufficiently different from the previous one. Um, well, gees, didn't you learn Perl from your previous edition? It's not a new book, it's a new edition, and if you bought the last edition, you're not in our target audience.
One /. kiddie calls the new edition a "cynical marketing ploy" because we haven't changed much from the third edition. I'm not sure why that's so important to people. I'm amazed that the decisions I made about various things, such as which chapter to use for the free sample, are attributed to O'Reilly malice. There's a lot of hate in those /. posters.
But I know that Slashcode is Perl, and /. is a marketing trap itself. All those kiddies don't even realize that /. is there to make money off their eyeballs while they complain about how they don't like anything. That's right, do that all you like. Just keep looking at the ads and premium content.
/. seems to reflect society as a whole. There's often quite a bit of rational discussion about the merits of the hype du jour, but it's lost in the sheer volume of knee-jerk responses. It's frustrating because I read
Instead, people get an idea in their head that X is Good or Bad and they post to that effect without considering what's really going on. It's like so many Perl people who gripe about Perl 6 without realizing what's really happening. Their favorite idiom gets wiped out, so they announce to the world that they won't be using Perl 6 even though the tremendous improvements over Perl 5 are manifest. So many people want to react rather than think.
As Randal once said regarding Perl's type system vis-a-vis Java's (paraphrased, I think), "I just smile and move my programs into production before the Java programmer has his first compile." That's how I view a lot of this. Yeah, they moan and groan about things they don't understand, but I just smile and collect my paycheck for this "dead" technology we call Perl.
Re:The Slashdumb Effect
sigzero on 2005-07-27T11:44:03
I know exactly what Randal is saying. I am the admin and we have a Java programmer, yet I am constantly saying "Perl has that", "Perl does it faster", "My Perl utility is done. What about yours?"
I enjoy the "power of Perl" and I have only been learning/using it for a year.
Re:The Slashdumb Effect
ghenry on 2005-07-27T13:23:51
A big Grin from me. I agree with Brian's point of view.
Re:Slashdot has ads?
brian_d_foy on 2005-07-27T16:13:08
You might have set your subscription preferences not to show ads. I see ads though.
"Premium content" is just the stuff they pay someone to come up with. Slashdot wouldn't really work if there weren't a team of people aggregating or developing new thigns to read. Without that it's just a bunch of kiddies arguing over whose computer has better blinking lights.:)
