[Catalyst] Last Chance / Last Day: Web development platform contest and Perl / Catalyst

[Thomas L. Shinnick]

At 03:07 PM 11/30/2006, Sebastian Riedel wrote:
>Tobias Kremer wrote:
>>Today I was in a meeting with one of Germany's top twenty
[snip]

>We really have to start learning from the Ruby folks,
>take a look at these two books, it's pure marketing genius.
>
>    From Java To Ruby: Things Every Manager Should Know 
> (http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_j2r/index.html)
>    Rails For Java Developers 
> (http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_r4j/index.html)
>
>>I hate to say this, but Perl is really lacking some sort of marketing.
[snip]

>I completely agree, but you don't get (good) marketing for free,
>a company or The Perl Foundation would have to invest money in it.
>
>Take a look at Java, PHP and Ruby, all the marketing initiatives can 
>be traced back to a few smart companies.
>
>(Please take a few minutes and think about it before flaming me, thanks)

Breaking in here, but something SRI said about "a few smart companies"....

A couple months ago I read several articles about the phenomenon of 
"technology churn".  Basically the authors had identified a set of 
companies, consultants, and evangelists (trainers for hire) who kept 
reappearing over the years, but each time selling "the latest thing".

These people were making money off of 'selling' the latest 
fad/technology/methodology/you-name-it .  It's not that they were 
necessarily cynical - they may have genuinely believed "this time's 
for real!"  But after 'selling' two, three or more 'answers' over the 
years you would think they would have been ashamed?

What I'm pointing to is that people can profit from the sheer 
'newness' of a technology/methodology.

Enthusiasm is very hard to defeat.  And it is rather hard to get 
people enthusiastic about something as old as Perl.  Especially as 
people don't know anything 'new' about Perl.

Anyway, it is a factor somewhat apart from the others like FUD and 
management bias.  Heck, 'newness' even seems to be helping .Net and 
C# work against Java.  It's newer, so it must be better!

So I guess the question I'd like y'all to consider (that I have no answer for):
   How does one make Perl + Catalyst  'new' and 'sexy' enough to 
generate enthusiasm?

I expect that there will simply always be a large number of people 
who will read "Catalyst Framework in Perl" as "grandmother's new shoes" :-(



-- 
I'm a pessimist about probabilities; I'm an optimist about possibilities.
     Lewis Mumford  (1895-1990)
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