To me there are two kinds of people in IT -- self starters and the rest of us. Those who seem to have excelled very far in Perl are clearly self starters. They read Perl core source code, write XS modules, contribute to CPAN, etc. etc. This type of person does very well in an unstructured environment. Hand them books, source code, and editor and a computer and they will largely teach themselves.
Just to add to your nice analysis I think there are also people who are self-starters but would still appreciate some advanced coursework for example on certain CPAN distributions. When I started with Perl over 10 years ago I was in a work and life environment where I could spend the time to learn the core language and important CPAN distributions (e.g. DBI, LWP, CGI, etc.) by myself using the Camel, other O'Reilly books and online info and at my job started with many interesting and diverse small projects where I could implement what I learned. Over time I was doing more and more complex projects and learning more and more aspects of the language and delving more deeply into CPAN. I think some people who are indeed self-starters are in situations where they cannot spend the time to go through all this effort, I feel I was very lucky. In summary, self starting takes lots of time and the right environment to apply what you are learning. The thing with a structured class led by a great instructor is that you can accelerate all of this and be taught very quickly to an advanced level on the core language or a CPAN distribution of interest. Even self-starters would appreciate having this shortcut :)
After spanning the web for discussions on Perl by non-Perl developers I have found a common thread -- there is a general dislike of Perl by the more non-self-starter crowd. Most, if not all, complaints I read about Perl had to do with a strong sense of confusion about how some facet of the language worked. I saw this as primarily an education problem, not always necessarily a problem with the language. What I consistently saw was that developers had started learning Perl and then simply stopped when confronting something confusing about it. When I compared their complaints against those working actively in Perl-based projects or CPAN modules I found that there were suitable workarounds in almost every case.
Totally agree here, most if not all problems that non-Perl people have with the language is just lack of proper education about a certain aspect or negative false perception coming from totally false posts by haters on the web. One question I always have is why is Perl not taught in undergraduate school? I've taught it as part of the bioinformatics curriculum in graduate school where it is definitely appropriate but I think in general it's a great teaching language for beginners as it's very easy to start with and use as a tool to understand algorithms, data structures, etc.
In reply to Re: Perl(Monks) University
by hermida
in thread Perl(Monks) University
by InfiniteSilence
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