in reply to Perl making people more POLITE

If there is a correlation it might not be because of learning a programming language, but rather because of the act of programming. Programming is one of the few things where 1) you can see what you produced doesn't work. FULLSTOP. and 2) there's noone to blame but you. You may blame the computer, the compiler, the teacher ... but if you persist and actually do debug the program you wrote you find out that the blame was on you. Again and again. This does teach some humility. And unteaches blaming others for your faults.

Besides .. polite ne successful. More often than not it prevents success.

Jenda
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Re^2: Perl making people more POLITE
by TGI (Parson) on Sep 08, 2008 at 17:29 UTC

    perl's low defect rate must help to reinforce that effect. :)

    I don't think there's any causative effect, really. I think normal social effects are at play here. The Perl community has somehow managed to evolve as a friendly place. At this point it's a self reinforcing system. However, if noxious, vituperative folks were allowed to dominate the conversation, the friendly people would leave and standard Internet behavior would ensue, as the new feedback system gained dominance.

    The OPs thesis sounds kinda like the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.


    TGI says moo

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