Bill Anderson <bill@libc.org> wrote:
Well, I think I can comment on som eof teh 'revulsion' of many of the persons on the list. Some of us have/do hang out on c.l.python and c.l.perl. We have witness _ferst_hand_ this 'community's collective 'gargabe'. TO compare the two communities, you start with how they act/ do not act as one. First place to look: usenet, the sewer. In c.l.perl, any mention of non-perl, or anything less than absolute praise for perl, will land you in a flame war the likes or which satan himself wears asbestos clothing for (and if you mention python, satan bows out due to heat). I have seen people _try_ to start flame wars on c.l.py, and fail 99% of the time. I have only once seen something close to a flame war on c.l.py in many years. And in that was due in a large part to the other person in it (those who witnessed it now who I am speaking of).
The fallacy here is simply that Zope is adding a language, not a newsgroup. There are people who code Perl, Python and Zope every day and don't know, care about, read or post to comp.lang.anything. Bajillions of them in fact - a healthy majority. The decision whether to add a language should NOT be made on the basis of what a few Usenet addicts think. It should be made on the basis (among others) of whether it adds desirable functionality and "marketability" (for profit or otherwise) without fatally complicating the product. I think Perl methods will be very popular and not particularly difficult to maintain as a Zope feature, although I do anticipate some complications down the road as new Zope, Python and Perl releases see the light of day and have to co-exist on various platforms.
I can pretty much gaurantee that oce we start getting perl people on the list, doing stuff in perl, the following scenario will occur repeatedly:
"I want to do this, how do I do it?" "like this...<python code>" "I don;t want to use python, I want to use the all cool lnaguage of perl" "Sorry, can't help you" ...
Actually what will probably happen is that someone will ask "I want to do this, how do I do it" and one or more Python enthusiasts will say "like this... <python code>" and one or more Perl enthusiasts will SIMULTANEOUSLY say "like this... <perl code>" and the user will pick what suits them, and get back to work. Only the professional arguers will have the time to fight over this stuff.