in reply to Explaining a Perl project to a VB-bound audience

You have been give many-a-suggestion already, some of which are silly, and some of which are good. My advice is simple: teach them some perl. They are at heart programmers, and as such, should be familiar with some concepts. You should just introduce in *loose*terms* what modules are, and how they fit into this application. Most importantly, give out reading material, like abstract's for modules, along with short examples. For example: 
DBI - Database independent interface for Perl

use strict;
use DBI;
my $DataBaseHandle = DBI->connect(......

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You get the picture.

If, however, the programmers are totally clueless about stuff like "CGI", I suggest also a primer on that, as reading material only, ....

You've spoken with the guys, right? Well if you didn't, please do. Prod them a little bit, gauge their general knowledge of the components involved in your project, and then bring plenty of reading material, to hand out at the end of your presentation (as well as the reading material to hand out before).

Hopefully you get my drift, even though it can't articulate it well at this moment. Good hunting ;)

 
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Re: Re: Explaining a Perl project to a VB-bound audience
by Lasker (Beadle) on Jan 20, 2002 at 19:58 UTC

    Wow, I didn't expect to raise that much interest on this topic... Thanks all for your help!

    One fact you maybe missed is that the presentation is not really geared towards "forcing" them to use Perl; it is just meant to show them *how* this stuff works, _not_ why it's better than some of what they actually do ;-)

    I guess I'll just take a mixed approach, probably introducing general concepts about CGI, CPAN and modules, and also giving them some stuff to read (maybe before actually giving the speech, i.e. XML-RPC, MySQL information, maybe also some perldocs). However, if I happened to get negative feedback, I could get to establish comparisions to VB using your advice. I agree that it could be dangerous, but still, if Perl is good at things that VB isn't at. they should face it: that's just the way it is. (and viceversa -GUI generation in Perl (using Glade) was rather a headache, as some of you pointed out ;P)

    Oh well, nobody said this world had to be fair for anyone ;-)

    Apart from that, I didn't really mean to relate so directly Perl to VB, just find analogies that could let them understand better why I used it as well as some of the stuff it can actually do.

    Anyway, I'll take all of this info into account. Again, thanks a bunch!! :-))

[reply]
      This may be a silly comment, but if you're trying to explain to someone how something works, aren't you necessarily going to teach this some of how the language works?

      Or, are you just going to work with the high-level design? In which case, the language they do and don't know is irrelevant. Languages are implementation details. Designs are language-independent (for the most part).

      I mean, they're not going to maintain a Perl application without knowing Perl, right?

      ------
      We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

      Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

[reply]

        Right :-)

        I have to explain them both, the high-level thing and the gory details. However, I consider that, for the sake of understanding, it would be appropiate to give an approach to the project keeping in mind that these guys have only programmed with VB (the "who" factor). And, furthermore, I can't trust them to know some of the details I otherwise would risk to leave unknown.

        Okay, they are programmers and stuff, but I just don't have enough *time* to give them an introductory course to Perl, and, then, show the project. I have to make them understand how it works, keeping in mind that they know nearly nothing of this (and yes, I've already talked to them and given them some docs ;P). Therefore, comparing some concepts to VB is the only way I can think of to do it shortly... hope it works.

        Thanks for the interest!

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