Ah, ok.
I thought you meant something like advocacy WITHIN Perl, as in
advocating for specific technical changes on this list.
I agree that there is currently some difficulty advocating Perl outwards.
Adam K
John Adams wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Adam Kennedy <cpan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>> Although I find it hard to understand what exactly you mean by top down
>> or bottom up advocacy
>
> Bottom up: Sysadmins, DBAs, and developers convincing managers and
architects it's okay to use Perl. Students convincing teachers that Perl
is an appropriate learning language. I've done both those, and I've had
some limited success.
>
> Top down: Convincing CTOs and CIOs it's okay to use Perl. Convincing the
ACM recommend Perl as a learning language. I've never tried that, though I
know of one effort to do the former. I'm not sure how it turned out,
though someone else on this list might.
>
>> Advocacy is mostly people telling other people what to do.
>
> That's the reality of the situation as it applies to Perl, and that's
the problem. For advocacy to be effective, you have to _convince_ people
of what they should do, of what would be useful to them, of what good it
is. Telling people is worse than useless.
>
> My success in convincing people they should give Perl a whirl has been
based on showing rather than telling. When I demonstrate an effective use
for Perl, that's done some good. Not much else has, other than good
manners, patience, and all that jazz.
|
