[LA.pm] contrasting London and LA

[Eric Hammond]

Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> I'm not entirely sure of the history, but I think Idealabs was also the
> breeding grounds of goto.com, which became Overture and eventually Yahoo
> Search Marketing.  

For those not familiar with the history, Citysearch was marketed as
"an Idealab company" but had very little to do with the Idealabs 
incubation factory.  We were not located near any other Idealabs
companies and had zero interaction with their developers.  I only 
remember seeing Bill Gross once in my years at Citysearch.

The Perl growth in Idealabs and other LA companies has come from
many corners with each developer using it adding his or her own
contribution to the expansion.

I have programmed almost exclusively in Perl since 1993 and am
quick to explain to others how useful I find it, but I don't think
the whole world should use Perl, nor do I object to the rise of
Ruby or Python.  Coming from an evangelical Christian background
I understand how strong the human desire is to belong to a group
and to want to convince everybody to do things the way "we" do.

I see some of the same traits in users of programming language 
and operating systems.

--
Eric Hammond
ehammond at thinksome.com