This is an interesting discussion. Many posts here on PM that are not strictly language specific have been very positive and useful for me too.
I do read a lot of news on a variety of topics, but I'm obviously still narrowly focused since the Puruvian/MS issue in this node never crossed my radar until now.
Several things happen for me simultaneously while reading PM.
- I'm learning Perl in spades. Syntax, idioms, sources of other knowledge, etc;
- Additionally, a wide variety of programming best practices creep into posts here - invaluable to me;
- Because I'm also a user of PM for it's technical focus, I'm sympathetic to those critical of these posts, and some of this thinking simply exhibits my own personality disorders... :)
- Perl culture has become an important component for me because of PM;
- For me, PM has become the bellweather Perl site, and, whether it's correct or not, I view it as possibly *the* most significant node/arbiter/source of Perl culture;
- and, since Perl is so important in the world, and hopefully, with the advent of Perl 6, will reclaim some PR and value positioning from (ahem) Java and others, it occurs to me that PM may also be one of the places that dominance might arise from (ya think anybody actually thought about things like this in PM's evolution? Probably not, humble gods that they are, but it looks like they're getting it anyway :);
- Of course, I'm probably attaching way too much significance to all this, however, PM has become a way-station for me in several ways. Getting additional data about related issues (ala Open Source, Open Standards, various programming practices and Perl idioms and optimizations, habits of highly effective programmers, legal issues that may be relevant to my work, future or company, and much more) - for me, this is a perfect place for me to see these things in context, discussed by people I know of and respect.
It would be useful to have sections appropriate for these kinds of (field related but maybe not directly language-usage related) discussions.
It doesn't seem that PM collectively does a bad job at it now, and I'd hate to see heavy police action kick in. Likewise, I'd hate to see PM lose focus on it's clearly demonstrated Perlish usefulness.
And since this post is one of those nodes in question - I'm wondering if I'm going to regret posting it... lol.
