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Meta-comment: I find it interesting that perl related posts tend to generate so many comments. I attribute this to the fact that: a.) A lot of people really li

Meta-comment: I find it interesting that perl related posts tend to generate so many comments. I attribute this to the fact that: a.) A lot of people really like perl and b.) A lot of people really hate perl.

jrockway 18y ago
Yup, I noticed the same thing. There are 110 comments between the two Perl articles today, and only 3 on the "government can take your laptop for no reason" article. Amusing. I think people get really upset when they are told that Perl isn't actually dead. I mean, it is, right? How come people are still using it!? </sarcasm>
SwellJoe 18y ago
And: c.) A lot of people really like hating Perl. I think it goes beyond basic dislike of the language...that would require knowledge of the language, which is pretty clearly lacking in many of the flames. I suspect it's often human tribal tendencies. Rubyists and Pythonistas see another tribe competing in the very same environment with very similar capabilities (because, let's face it, mild syntactic differences aside Perl, Python and Ruby are more alike than they are different when compared to almost any other language), and they also see an opportunity to combine to beat up on a currently larger and older tribe. By the time you've spent enough time with a language to get past identifying with just that one tribe, you don't feel as aggressive an urge to pontificate on the suckage of other languages.
- nailer 18y ago
  d) A lot of people who like Perl like to troll people who dislike Perl, by telling them they "don't know Perl".
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    I think maybe you're categorizing me in group "d". ;-) I've never said there aren't valid criticisms of Perl...just agreeing with msluyter's very astute meta-comment, and adding one more option. I believe that people exist in both groups "b" and "c"...I wasn't overloading method "b" to actually mean something else. Some people in "b" probably even have valid reasons for hating Perl...but, I think we can all agree that the majority of flames in any language thread come from a place of ignorance about the language. After all, if you really don't like a language, odds are good you don't do much work in it, and so don't actually know a lot about it. But, if you think we need one more option, I won't argue. There probably are people in category "d" (in addition to me, it seems), as well.

jrockway 18y ago

Yup, I noticed the same thing. There are 110 comments between the two Perl articles today, and only 3 on the "government can take your laptop for no reason" article. Amusing. I think people get really upset when they are told that Perl isn't actually dead. I mean, it is, right? How come people are still using it!? </sarcasm>

SwellJoe 18y ago

And: c.) A lot of people really like hating Perl. I think it goes beyond basic dislike of the language...that would require knowledge of the language, which is pretty clearly lacking in many of the flames. I suspect it's often human tribal tendencies. Rubyists and Pythonistas see another tribe competing in the very same environment with very similar capabilities (because, let's face it, mild syntactic differences aside Perl, Python and Ruby are more alike than they are different when compared to almost any other language), and they also see an opportunity to combine to beat up on a currently larger and older tribe. By the time you've spent enough time with a language to get past identifying with just that one tribe, you don't feel as aggressive an urge to pontificate on the suckage of other languages.

nailer 18y ago
d) A lot of people who like Perl like to troll people who dislike Perl, by telling them they "don't know Perl".
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  I think maybe you're categorizing me in group "d". ;-) I've never said there aren't valid criticisms of Perl...just agreeing with msluyter's very astute meta-comment, and adding one more option. I believe that people exist in both groups "b" and "c"...I wasn't overloading method "b" to actually mean something else. Some people in "b" probably even have valid reasons for hating Perl...but, I think we can all agree that the majority of flames in any language thread come from a place of ignorance about the language. After all, if you really don't like a language, odds are good you don't do much work in it, and so don't actually know a lot about it. But, if you think we need one more option, I won't argue. There probably are people in category "d" (in addition to me, it seems), as well.