The State of the Onion 9
by Larry Wall
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Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Natasha gets to represent the next wave of international programmers, particularly those from developing countries. Natasha's mother probably worked for a large eastern-bloc TLA, and I don't mean IBM. But Natasha is actually doing a bit of industrial work here. All in the interests of capitalism, of course. Though whose capital is perhaps a bit unclear at times.
A lot of people like Natasha are trying to figure out how to make a living in the new economic realities, and one of those economic realities is that the traditional western powers are trying to vacuum up all intellectual property rights on behalf of various corporate interests. And she wonders, rightfully so, if there will ever be any place in that economy for her, and for people like her.
So when our friend "Mad Dog" comes to town, and preaches the gospel that free and open source software is the only path to freedom, the only way for the rest of the world to push back--well, she can see the appeal of that notion.
And there are a lot of Natashas in the world, and potential Natashas. Over the long haul, she may well be the most important member of this list.
Oliver represents the next generation of programmers, who don't even know it yet. Oliver is not ready to learn computer science. He is just starting to think about programming because he'd like to be a video game designer someday. He doesn't know that what he likes best about Perl is that it will let him learn what he needs to know one concept at a time, without forcing him to learn a bunch of abstract concepts all at once before he really needs them. When he drives on the freeway, he drives in the slow lane.
On the other hand, Pixie drives in the fast lane. She is what you might call an extreme programmer.
As an extreme programmer, Pixie loves testing. Preferably testing to destruction. The best defense is a good offense. She'll get the job done, but she's determined to have a lot of fun doing it.
Pixie works well in small teams, especially with pair programming. A team of two is the perfect size for her because wherever she's aiming, her partner can always stand on the opposite side of her.
As part of a rapid response unit, Pixie is very much into rapid prototyping. So Pixie's favorite Perl 6 feature is the yadayadayada operator, which lets her stub out new functions and blow up their interfaces even before the function bodies are written.
