Anyone who isn't sure that davorg is a Saint, as well as a saint, should review this thread and marvel at his patience and generosity.

One thing this makes me wonder is whether someone who asked those questions would get such a helpful response here. This is not a site that suffers fools gladly. And perhaps that's a good thing, in the long run, as the standard of the threads stays pretty high. But perhaps we also ought to make a bit of an effort to be missionaries as well as monks and welcome people who seem to be asking dim questions.

I speak as somebody who is scarcely out of the dim question phase himself, but perhaps thicker skinned than most. I think PM cd be quite intimidating for just the kind of person who needs to be here rather than in the kingdom of the blind.

My other thought is about CGI Programming 101, which was my first exposure to perl. I confess I found it very useful. And why was that? Well, because I knew *nothing* about computer programming. In the early 90s I wrote some Lotus 123 macros - that was it. And a lot of the other online tutorials started at a level I wasn't at. Now, looking back and actually knowing enough to put what I learnt then into perspective I realise that it caused me a lot of trouble - by teaching me to parse form data with a cut 'n' paste snippet that I never understood, and by letting me off using strict and warnings, etc etc. But conceivably I would not have got into the position of being able to know how unsatisfactory it was as a course, if I hadn't followed it (well, the free chapters, anyway).

Evidently there is a need for a tutorial that starts from the ground floor, but which builds in good practice from the start. Should be possible. May in fact exist. I haven't seen it done.

§ George Sherston