http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=226464


in reply to Perl at Wal-Mart

I am actually sceptical about this kind of prospect for promoting Perl. Perl is seen as a complicated language. Which is true. I would think that anyone smart enough to code Perl would be smart enough to be able to install another programming language on their computer. I would rather think that Wal-Mart customers are not the highly skilled programmers. Think about it this way: Microsoft Word has had Visual Basic support for ages -- how many Word users know Visual Basic?

The only thing that this would be good for is encouraging software writers to wrtie in Perl, because the platform would be already installed on the machine. But how many unixes ship without Perl these days anyway?

Now if we could slip Perl into the standard Windows distribution...

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Perl at Wal-Mart
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 13, 2003 at 21:33 UTC
    Perl is seen as a complicated language. Which is true.

    I disagree. Perl people like to think Perl is complicated but in reality, it's an extremely easy to learn language. The documentation is second to none, there are many great sources of help, and the language itself is very logical and easy to follow, even if it does look like line noise ;-P

    As for being included with a OS at Walmart, it means nothing and won't increase the user base substantially. I applaud you for bring it up though, discussion of Perl advocacy is a good thing :)

[reply]
Re: Re: Perl at Wal-Mart
by justinNEE (Monk) on Jan 16, 2003 at 01:10 UTC 
    I would rather think that Wal-Mart customers are not the highly skille
+d programmers.

    [download]
    EVERYONE shops at walmart.
[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Perl News