
Perl making people more POLITE (at least perl monks thinks so) - greyman
http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=709482
======
m0nty
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.

~~~
jrockway
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.)

~~~
m0nty
> 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 :)

~~~
jrockway
_I might as easily have said Erlang..._

I think Erlang does have a bit of fashion going for it. It works like other
languages that people know, so they can pick it up and do stuff with it.
Haskell is not quite like that.

Anyway, remember how the github people rewrote git-daemon in Erlang instead of
fixing their issue with 10 lines of C, just so they could blog about it? Now
_that's_ fashion.

------
greyman
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
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....

~~~
jrockway
_The TMTOWTDI philosophy seems to have hardwired a certain degree of open
mindedness in them._

I think you are spot-on here.

