Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: COPS in perl?
Message-ID: <15710:Jan923:58:1791@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 9 Jan 91 23:58:17 GMT
References: <9926@as0c.sei.cmu.edu>
Organization: IR
Lines: 65

In article <9926@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> df@sei.cmu.edu (Dan Farmer) writes:
> If your so terribly
> concerned about the content in this group, why don't you make a proposal
> to split it into other groups?  Change the names?  Do whatever, instead
> of complaining about people being interested enough to have fun with the
> language.

I made my proposal, for the Perl Users Group.

Look around. Can't you see a users group here? Can't you see that ``The
Perl language'' hardly describes the variety of activities that go on
within this group? People don't *want* a comp.lang.perl. People *want* a
Perl Users Group.

> As a matter of fact, I think of all the postings to
> this group, *yours* have been the most consitant -- consistant in that
> they having nothing to do with perl than any other articles I've seen.

Actually, I've posted about 25 articles to this group, all *direct*
followups to previous articles. By my latest count, 7 were technical and
had to do with Perl directly, 9 more were technical but were in threads
that had nothing to do with Perl, 8 more were non-technical meta-Perl
discussions, and 1 was a pure flame (which, despite all my intentions,
at least three people extracted useful information from). Yesterday Tom
decided to package up an archive of all of the above and send it to me,
supposedly to prove that most of my articles were non-technical and
``obstructive.'' When I pointed out that most of my articles here were
on technical issues, he counted, realized I was right, and told me to
fuck off. How pleasant.

> >Just as things having nothing to do with the TeX language
> >per se are fair game for TeXHAX, most of the postings currently crammed
> >into comp.lang.perl would find a new home in a PUG mailing list.
>   And what exactly would you like to see here?

I'd certainly be interested in a new group called comp.lang.perl, for
discussions of Perl as a language per se. I'm also interested in
applications of Perl to various problem areas, but there are already
source groups meant to handle such traffic.

> Where would the appropriate
> place to post news of a program that people have been asking for, pray tell,

There isn't any good place, other than the source groups. I've been
complaining for a while about the lack of a general programming
hierarchy; it's a shame that there isn't a comp.prog.help-wanted group,
for example.

> Personally, I'd say that a program or idea that uses perl as
> a language is more than fair game to post about in the perl language group,

By the same token, a program or idea that uses C as a language is more
than fair game to post about in the C language group.

Look, folks, perl is not that new any more. There are fewer Perl wizards
than C wizards, but there are enough people familiar with the language
to answer simple questions about it. Perl novices need help---but so do
C novices, and they learn to find code in the source groups. Production
code simply doesn't belong in a language group.

On the flip side, there do seem to be enough people who *do* want to see
not only the language but code that uses the language. These people want
a users group, not a language group.

---Dan