New word: Monkitude, being, acting or emoting in the manner of a PerlMonk =)
--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)
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What are you calling negative comments ?
Some times it's hard to see people failing to even diagonal reading a perldoc... Are using the supersearch on perlmonks.
People tend to post too fast IMO. It's ok when you don't really understand the perldoc or concepts of certain things. It's also good to post your code that doesn't work like it supposed to. I see a lot of posts just asking essentials which are easy found.
eg I need a redirect? He uses CGI.pm ... If you do a search in CGI.pm on redirect you get the answer immediatlty
I know there are a lot of tutorials on how to program. Maybe there should be some guides where the information is how to find it on a fast manner.
I want to hear/read some other opinions on the subject.
--
My opinions may have changed,
but not the fact that I am right
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I think you're right. It's not a failing of Perl that there's no documentation. Far from it, perldoc gives you access to hundreds (thousands?) of pages of information about just about everything you want to know about the language.
Part of the trouble is that beginning Perl is easy. It's fast to program, the syntax doesn't take long to understand, and the change/execute cycle doesn't have long compile/trace/debug steps in it.
The initial investment in starting the language doesn't require learning about dozens of class libraries or pawing through #include'd files. People don't have to read the documentation to start with Perl.
One thing I really appreciated about Elements of Programming with Perl is that Andrew points out the wealth of information available in perldoc on page 12. By the time he introduces Perl syntax proper, he's already demonstrated a program to grep through the perlfaq for keywords. That's really useful -- if you can convince people that the answers to most of their questions are on their hard drives already, thirty seconds away, they won't have to post beginner questions so often.
Some will anyway. That's being realistic about human nature and poor definitions of laziness. But the trick is to make sure that those who can teach themselves know what resources they have available.
I suggest pointing people to the documentation instead of regurgitating code from it. By all means, explain what might be unclear. Just don't steal the opportunity for the petitioners to teach themselves in the process.
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