Perl Learning- Personal Expert System at PerlMonks

Dear Monks,
I often feel need to keep track of what I have learned so far or planning to learn in Perl, and perlmonks can serve that purpose very well, by having a systematic format and a section defined.

This could be possible and extremely useful especially when we have well defined link structure and availability of docs, faqs, modules etc.. at standard places in standard format.

Theoretically, I know it could be involved work for pmdev, but at the same time it has a huge advantage potential.

An example: If you know you know certain modules or planning to learn certain modules, you can put it here. It can be linked to CPAN, tutorials or perlmonk search/google search. You can assign various level with that piece of knowledge on certain scale. once you get comfort with that piece of knowledge you can move up the scale. Same goes for perl function or perldocs. I can also build all the perlmonks link around a certain topic. Thus you can build your personal expert-system at perlmonks.

The format to define this could be tricky, subjective and desire input from variety of perspective. Simple elegant interface without requiring to much complexities should be the goal.

I think that we can build such a system with collective wisdom of monks. However involved work it is, the first requirement is to see the usefulness of the system.

artist
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Beautify your existence.

Comment on Perl Learning- Personal Expert System at PerlMonks

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Re: Learning Space by crenz (Priest) on May 20, 2003 at 18:40 UTC
Artist, There are already a number of ways for you to enter your knowledge into PerlMonks: Module reviews Topical meditations Code sections (Q&A, Snippets and Craft) These nodes can still be edited later as well. I find that topical meditations, for example, are a good way to collect knowledge about a certain topic (e.g. linguistics, refactoring, software management, ...). If the author maintains them, they can be very useful. And they're always available via (Super) Search. Apart from PerlMonks, what you are proposing sounds like a knowledge base to me. You could try to start one yourself by hosting a Wiki (although I guess there already should be a Perl Wiki somewhere out there). I guess a wiki would probably be more appropriate than PerlMonks for what you are trying to achieve. And of course, nobody keeps you from building up your personal knowledge base on your home node. A couple of monks do that.	[reply]
Re: Learning Space by tilly (Archbishop) on May 21, 2003 at 06:59 UTC
There is an inevitable conflict. People want to contribute to systems that make it simple to contribute. Other people love tbe content and think that it would be wonderful if it just did that and also had extra structure X. Unfortunately if it had extra structure X from the beginning, you wouldn't get so much raw content. What to do? I don't have an answer for that. I just see this as yet another trade off. And then the question becomes how to trade it off. To me the answer strongly resembles the one made in a different space in End To End Arguments in System Design. (That paper was critical in coming up with the design for the basic Internet.) And the answer is that worse appears to be better, the system that makes contribution easiest, succeeds. That is what tbe Web does. CPAN works the same way, low bar for admission, and it doesn't do a lot of what people want. Perlmonks, ditto. Wikis build excellent documentation. That doesn't mean that a wonderfully structured repository of our collective wisdom wouldn't be wonderful. But build the framework for it, and it won't get filled. Build a simple system, and it gets filled overflowing with knowledge fertilizer. In short, Worse is Better. Even though common sense (uninformed by a detailed understanding of human dynamics) would argue otherwise.	[reply]
Re: Learning Space by benn (Vicar) on May 20, 2003 at 19:20 UTC
I think you might need to be a little clearer here on exactly what it is you're after. In terms of 'handy perlmonks links', we have the Personal Node, the scratchpad, the home node...as for 'assigning levels to knowledge', and 'pieces of knowledge', I think that's all a bit too arbitrary to build into the Engine. Self assessment's fine, but when you try too hard to quantify it, you end up spending more time assessing than learning. If you want a personal expert-system, write one - then it'd be personal. :) Cheers, Ben.	[reply]
Re: Learning Space by thelenm (Vicar) on May 20, 2003 at 20:45 UTC
When I see something on PerlMonks that I think is worth remembering, I tend to put it on my scratchpad (which is made very easy by the "add to scratchpad" link in the Personal Nodelet). I'm not sure exactly what you're suggesting, but maybe you could just use your scratchpad as a "learning space" and move links around on it as you become more comfortable with the concepts you're trying to learn? -- Mike `-- just,my${.02}`	[reply]
Re: Learning Space by Marza (Vicar) on May 21, 2003 at 06:42 UTC
I would also say more info is needed. What to learn depends on your situation. If you are primarily PC based, it would not get you much to learn Unix modules that you may or may not use. Much of it should be driven by curiosity. What looks interesting. I would not mind playing with CGI but I don't have a need for it at work. They outsourced our website and it was primarily graphic oriented. No ecommerce... My work tends to be more system and lan based. So Dave Roths Mods and Jendas stuff is what I primarily use. Explore and play!	[reply]