[Pdx-pm] [meeting notes] What can we do about the low student SoC turn out?

Corey Hollaway hollaway at gmail.com
Fri Apr 11 00:45:21 PDT 2008


> > - Make perl 'cool' so that the kids think that it's exciting
> >  - parrot
I don't think parrot would make perl more exciting, as long as the
word "parrot" is left out of the discussion.  The reason is because I
don't know what "parrot" is referring to.  "parrot" is like a null
pointer, and therefore might lead to a segmentation fault (and
therefore a psychological negative response).  It's like when Java
people are talking about "JBoss" or when someone brings up "object
patterns" or when someone says they have a PhD, or they won the
Olympics.  Since "JBoss" or "object patterns" don't (to me) have any
defined way for how they can help me, they appear to make the speaker
look pseudo-"superior", in which the speaker becomes quickly inferior
and therefore I stop listening to them.  It's equivalent to someone
saying they're a Godly programmer, or showcasing themselves.  If I
started talking about parrot  to Fred (and he has no idea what parrot
is, but knows that it's something important about perl), is like
saying I am a God -- in which case he'll stop listening since he
senses my motives are to make myself look much better than he is.

To help kids think perl is cool is to talk about things that can help
them with stuff they already know about.  Not to talk about words that
lead to segmentation faults and false-intention-guessing and
inferiority build-up.

The only evidence I have is myself...I've been programming with perl
for awhile now, but when someone brings up the world "parrot," anxiety
and anger just burst out, for I feel the intention of the author is to
showcase themselves with a buzzword (VS helping me get problems
solved).  I know, I could look the word up on Wikipedia, but that's
not the point.  The point is, if one wants to boost the popularity of
perl (or anything), words like "parrot" need to be avoided so that the
$target doesn't execute $target->feelings_of_inferior($src);  we need
to prove that our intentions is to make the $target feel empowered and
powerful given the tools of perl, so that
$target->likeability('perl')++, you know what I'm talkin' about?  Our
mission is to psychologically avoid all negative implications.

That's my 2 cents.

Sincerely,
Corey

--------------------------
assumption: 99.99% communication is subjective.
assumption: Subjective is based on personal wants.
Conclusion: Therefore everyone is selfish.

-- 
Corey Hollaway
Programmer / Web Developer
E-mail: hollaway at gmail.com

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 10:28 AM, Kris Bosland <kris at bosland.com> wrote:
> Hey, I am working on a perl game, partly for fun and partly as a test
> vehicle for developing my testing-fu.  I am hoping for it to be like
> Crossfire.  Right now I am using Tkx and trying to get fileevent working for
> socket communication.
>
> -Kris
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 9:33 PM, benh <ben.hengst at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Here are all the things that I scribbled down from the meeting
> > tonight, add and comment as you feel necessary.
> >
> > - Make perl 'cool' so that the kids think that it's exciting
> >  - games
> >  - interesting apps
> >  - parrot
> >  - make it know where perl is used
> > - Make perl corporate/government safe
> >  - who do you call when something breaks?
> > - show those around you how neat perl is
> >  - we have this community for a reason
> >  - share the love, Tom(?) is creating parsers for others in need
> > - release Perl6
> > - inter-mingle with other groups
> >
> > --
> > benh~
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Pdx-pm-list at pm.org
> > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/pdx-pm-list
> >
>
>
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