• Conclusion: The community places less value on code than it does on discussion.
• Counterpoint: Some people (myself included) don't vote on a post unless they understand it. If I am not qualified to judge the worthiness of a slice of code (or if I don't have the time to dissect it), I won't vote. There are many newbies here who are considerably better at understanding simple English essays than they are at understanding code. If this is the case on a wide scale, then the disparity is at least partially accounted for.

• Conclusion: A lot of people don't love code as much as the title of the site would lead one to believe.
• Counterpoint: D*mn skippy. I'd rather read Gerard Manley Hopkins or Anna Ahkmatova than any perl cleverness written by Abigail (no offense to the gurus, absent or otherwise). There's no requirement here that you have to love Perl. Plenty of people just work with it, and might have left long ago if it weren't for the camaraderie that is also available here.

• Conclusion: Non-perl posts dumb down and dilute the database.
• Counterpoint: A good search engine will allow you to ignore any meditation or thoughtful commentary on art, history, science, mentoring, the municipal bond market, and Buddhism -- in addition to incredibly lame humor, heartfelt thanks, and oft-repeated idiocy. If all you want to read is code, it's there in the database, waiting to be read. If that is all you want. To put it another way, the New York Times isn't just about New York, MIT professors teach more than just technology, and monks in a real monastery learn about gardening and baking as well as studying the word of God or Buddha.

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