Hello chromatic,

Your points are well taken and valid. As the "Warts and All" article was the latest part of a now 22-part series on Perl, I think it goes without saying that the piece is not intended to scare newcomers off the language.

Rather, those following the series have gone through a topical survey of most of the major Perl subjects -- enough to get them going writing a variety of web-based scripts. This article is like a signpost along the way, saying, in essence, "now that we've covered most of the basics, here are some things to watch out for". Necessarily, these include opinions.

Which, again, needs to be considered in context: the series itself is titled "The Perl You Need to Know", and it has a specific conceit -- teaching Perl to developers who are goal-oriented and want to achieve a particular task, without delving more than necessary into the academics of the language.

I fully understand that the latter point probably makes many Perl Monks cringe and shriek. I sympathize. But much as you, and I, possess interest in programming and in Perl that goes beyond merely "how do I accomplish such-and-such and move on with my life", not everyone shares that same depth of interest. They may have perfectly valid reasons. I don't feel that it benefits the Perl community to alienate these people, or to suggest that only those who want to "go all the way" need apply.

In any case, that is the philosophy behind the "Perl You Need to Know" series, and I thought it might help to put installment 22, "Warts and All", into context.

Once again, I do appreciate this discussion and all of your wisdom out there.

thanks

Aaron

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Perl's warts by beagle
in thread Perl's warts by grinder

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.