in reply to RE: RE: RE: Diversity
in thread Diversity

Personally, I don't want to link to the FM, unless the FM is one that doesn't come with Perl. Otherwise, people can learn to RTFM on their system like everyone else. The FM is distributed with Perl for a reason, as well as perldoc, and man. Just my opinion, of course, but I see linking to something like perlop more harmful than good. What if the user is running Perl 4, or 5.003, and the linked docs are for 5.6? IMO, people should learn to use perldoc -f, and perldoc -q instead of expecting people to always point them to a web page.

Cheers,
KM

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
More on Diversity and the FM.
by BBQ (Curate) on Jun 01, 2000 at 07:14 UTC
    You'll laugh at this one, for sure. The 1st time I installed perl it was an ActiveState package. I new nothing about the language itself and could care less about who Larry Wall was (I didn't know religion back then:)). The only reason I installed perl was because I needed to learn CGI, and from what I had read it made more sense than coding in C. I had no idea that most OSes come with perl installed per default. I had no clue. Period.

    Naturally, I started reading the documentation that came with the ActiveState distro on my NT box. The first time I ever even HEARD of perldoc was when I got the Camel Book and discussed it with a friend. Up to then, I had no idea that most of the bible was inside perldoc to start off with. Hehe, I even remember I was amazed at how may +"Perl FAQ"s there where on AltaVista!

    Point being: There could be users out there that aren't aware that they have the FM sitting right under their nose! It would have been great if I had a mentor, someone that new perl or a site like perlmonks that I could come to and ask, "Do you know of a gooood Perl FAQ?", but I had to learn it the hard way. We were all clueless once, and some (such as myself) are still looking for clues.

    #!/home/bbq/bin/perl
    # Trust no1!
[reply]
RE(5) Diversity, Newbies, Humility
by neshura (Chaplain) on Jun 01, 2000 at 00:26 UTC
    You know, I have to agree with mdillon on this one. Perl Monks is the single friendliest tech site I have ever had the pleasure of participating in. You wouldn't catch me on #perl even if my job depended on it, because it filters out the thin-skinned sorts like me. It's fine to say "you should get a thicker skin" which I have been told, but screw that, I like myself the way I am.

    Look, some newbie comes on and asks how to get rid of whitespace, they don't have any f***ing clue that this question has been asked a thousand times. If they did, they'd know where to find the answer. Is it so much to ask to just point 'em towards a working link with a friendly word? I don't mean to get religious, but you don't see Franciscans saying RTFB. There's a genuine community spirit here, and it has as much to do with humility as it does with knowledge.

    sorry KM didn't mean to offend

    e-mail neshura

[reply]
      Well, #perl isn't a help desk, which is most peoples misconception. It is a community of people who like Perl. In fact, if you simply lurk there you could learn a ton from the various conversations that happen (when they actually pertain to Perl).

      It isn't a matter of a questions being asked 1000 times, but the fact that many questions are answered in the documentation that comes with Perl. You speak as though I have answered a bunch of (or any) questions with RTFM, instead of nicely pointing people to the docs (which I will not link to) or showing them a solution. So, stop appearing to be asking me to stop doing something I am not. Enough people with clue don't care for this site already and you shouldn't preech to nice, helpful, clueful folks.

      Cheers,
      KM

[reply]
        I think your answers are actually excellent, I've already told you that before. Look, it's just a different approach -- it may seem like my post was a bit self-righteous ("just a bit?") but not every larval perl user is clone of all the others -- proto-geeks with near-infinite spare hours to pore through volumes of electronic documentation. Some people are just coming over to Perl from another language, they need to know it NOW because their livelihood might depend on them acquiring a new skill as quickly as possible. (that's just one possible scenario)

        Anyway, I'm not trying to start an argument, and I think you are cool and you haven't been mean to anyone that I am aware of, but I don't think a dialogue on site philosophy is terribly out of bounds. No skin off my back if the clueful give perl monks (the site OR the people) a cold shoulder, for whatever reason. Okay, I might be a little hurt, just a bit :-)

        I understand if you get annoyed that people treat #perl like a help desk. I'm not surprised that they do. It's not like perl has a help desk. (Sure, there's lots of self-help available).
        Perl Monks fills a niche, I think it's cool. So I wish you peace, love, and free beer :-)

        e-mail neshura

[reply]
RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Diversity
by mdillon (Priest) on May 31, 2000 at 22:17 UTC
    OK. please just don't vote down newbie questions or bitch just because they annoy you. ignore them and go bitch on #perl (not to say that you have done these things much here, just that that seems to be your threat).
[reply]
      Well, I will vote as I want, and write what I want. Just as you will. I have yet to meanly say RTFM, in contrast I have nicely pointed people to the FM for their perusal. You're out of the ball park if you think I have made any threat.

      Cheers,
      KM

[reply]

In Section Perl Monks Discussion