I debated where to post this, or if to post at all. I am asking for advice on how to convince my co-workers to start learning and using Perl. This isn't a choice between languages, as we have previously only used KSH, awk, and sed. It isn't a question of superiority as they have all conceded the limitations and are elated when I can solve a problem for them using Perl.
This is also more than me just wanting to bring my co-workers from the dark side and make them all Perl converts. Since I started learning Perl about 9 months ago, we have slowly started to integrate projects that I have done into production. I do not believe in job security through obscurity. There is a very legitimate problem if I am the only engineer that can maintain these scripts. It is also a concern of mine that my code does not go through the same review process that everything else does. With KSH, we are on pretty level footing, so we provide checks and balances for each other.
I want to be clear that this isn't a problem of their abilities to code Perl or convincing anyone that it is the best tool around. I still do a great deal of tasks using nothing more than built in *nix commands. If I repeat the same sequence with any repetition, I throw them into a shell script.
This is a quest on how to convince my co-workers to learn the basics of "hello, world".
If you have encountered this obstacle in the past, how have you overcome it?
How do you convince someone that does not argue, but only smiles?
I am sure there is a great deal I have left out of this, but I believe the core of my
problem has came through. If not, please let me know and I will provide more information.
Cheers - L~R