Rewards of celebrity (was: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Apr 3))

[Cameron Laird]

In article <42FC2C22B9F94665.58B059EC6AF1AB7B.326AADF624B2C732 at lp.airnews.net>,
Fredrik Lundh <effbot at telia.com> wrote:
>The Software Development conference in San Jose turned out to be a major
>Python event.
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>    Some media coverage.  Like it or not, but Python is hot! :-)
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I've had occasion lately to scan a lot of comp.lang.perl
content.  I came across a few surprises that might interest
those with a stake in Python's popularity and prospects,
and perhaps suggestive of the merits of comp.lang.python*
reorganization.

comp.lang.perl.misc has a reputation for nastiness.  The
past few months have been less combative than it was in
1999; still, there's simply no mistaking c.l.p.m for c.l.p.  

The biggest surprise for me has been how thin the c.l.perl*
newsgroups are.  While I don't expect c.l.python's academi-
cism or even its aesthetic excesses, my current impression
is that comp.lang.perl.{misc,modules,moderated,tk} together
don't have as many serious and interesting posts as c.l.python.
It's not for lack of possibilities; Perlites have plenty left
to talk about on such subjects as OO style, new data-management
APIs, Win32 utility, GUI bindings, Unicode, thread capabilities,
numeric extensions, extensibility, how to teach reference use,
...  However, comp.lang.perl.misc is absolutely FULL of lowbrow
trespassing--Web site "developers" whose "shopping carts need
e-mail validation, and they'd rather do it in HTML anyway than
CGI, so could someone please give them either the perlscript
or netscape to make it work, even if it's unix?"  While that's
my paraphrase, it's absolutely not an unfair one; the true
postings are often worse.  Jeff Zucker went to the trouble of
beginning a collection of such drivel for the elevated purpose
<URL:http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=592780682> of
investigating patterns of learning.

In any case, Pythonians need not fret that they're missing a
whirlwind of production somewhere over in c.l.perl*.  Only a
sliver of what's happening there is other than forgettable.
Most of the good stuff appears to be happening in mailing
lists, which are, again, more pugnacious and posturing than
Python's, but otherwise comparable.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html