Do you think monk-sites of other topics would dilute the power of this site, or do you scratch your head in frustration when using other resources wishing there was a linuxmonks, or c++monks, I have searched in frustration not find the idea of perlmonks mock sites in other venues.

I don't think anything would "dilute the power of this site" as you put it.

On the other hand, I don't find myself frustrated wishing that there were analogs to this site for other languages or technologies. In fact there are such sites even if their quality isn't what you've come to expect here.

I think the crux of the issue is that this is a community. We share something in common here. Perl. Communities form around commonality. It just so happens that the Perl community grew up with Perl the language. Its origins, being non-commercial, fostered a strong "gift society" (as tilly once put it I think.) The result is that giving advice, help, instruction, and so forth are the social norm in this community. The Perl community isn't unique in this sense but it is a little more grounded in those ideals than, for example, the C++ or Java communities.

I think your idea is good in principle but in practice, these communities will only be as helpful as the participants anyway. Putting the word "monks" on the end of a technology's name isn't going to result in increasing the quality of the assistance available to people using that technology.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

Its origins, being non-commercial, fostered a strong "gift society" (as tilly once put it I think.) The result is that giving advice, help, instruction, and so forth are the social norm in this community.

The "gift culture" actually applies, as mentioned, not only perl, but hacker-dom in general, as talked about in the Hacker FAQ (How to Become A Hacker). Written by the maintainer of the Jargon File, it's a very good read. Perl is more of a hacking language, which probably explains why its community is so giving.

elusion : http://matt.diephouse.com

Perl is more of a hacking language, which probably explains why its community is so giving.

What do you mean by "Perl is more of a hacking language?" Before you answer, I understand that you are using the term hacker in its original sense. Even so, I think it's hard to claim that one language is more of a "hacking language" than another.

I think the reason the community is so giving is because its original contributor and primary benefactor, Larry Wall gave us Perl, our reason for existing together as a community. He set an example. I do agree, however, that he certainly wasn't the first to do so. The hacker culture which fostered Perl¹ is indeed rooted in these principles. I also agree that the term "gift society" applies to a wide range of overlapping communities of which ours is only one.

¹Larry was working at JPL when he first wrote Perl. I did a co-op there in the mid-90's and found the hacker culture was alive and well. :-)

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

At the time of writing this, javajunkies seems to be off the air.

It seems that the Perl community had much in the way of untapped momentum when this site first opened - people could easily see the need for it. There was also the novelty factor: nobody had run a technical Q&A discussion forum with voting before (slashdot is journalistic, and its primary function is not Q&A).

I would welcome anybody setting up a monastery based on some technical field I had an interest in, but it is not that easy to be successful.

Update: It seems that my problems getting to Java junkies were with my ISP. I have successfully been able to connect since.

Er, no, Java Junkies is alive and well at 0944EDT .. I signed up for a userID there some time ago (same nickname).

Of course, it's a community that's nowhere near as much fun as this one .. it hasn't reached the 'bare minimum' membership whre there are always a dozen or so people on.

And the single biggest thing that it's lacking functionally is a search field. Right irritating. Finally, the script is written in Perl, so JavaJunkies appeals more to Perl programmers who also know Java. And I guess that intersection set is small.

--t. alex
but my friends call me T.

Update:Sorry, I guess I mean to say that the site is written in Perl.

Thesus,

I indentify with your tag line. Unfortunately I don't see dotnetmonks.com ever happening. The bottom line is that Perl has a more open, inviting and supportive community than any other language can boast. It is a community that does not have to follow in the convoluted steps of a megalithic corporate entity, but instead blazes its own trail, marking the way for those who wish to join in the adventure.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad I get paid to program, even if 95% of the time it's not Perl. But I do miss the Perl community when I'm off doing other things.

- Acolyte
Studying at the feet of the masters

Yes, I had given up on the real possibility of dotnetmonks or anything nearly as open and supportive of the Perl community.

My dream? Microsoft develops a Windows version of Perl that will come built into their OS, and adds the appropriate levels of support for Perl into IIS, and the .NET infrastructure. It's a dream that I don't ever expect to see come true.

My only remaining hope is that the HORRIBLY BROKEN state of Perlscript in ASP.NET at the moment is fixed and more Perl programmers start realizing that the way ASP.NET is set up is a much better framework to design web applications in(If you're working in C#/VB.NET/one of the other REAL supported languages), if you could combine that a more powerful language like Perl, you'd have the best of both worlds.

-Theseus
Wishing he could Data.Dumper.Dump(string s); as easily as he can Data::Dumper->Dump($s);

-@rocks