Re: Death and Return of TIMTOWTDI

CPAN is an excellent repository for proven, reusable code. It's also an attic full of cruft and redundancy. However, I don't really see the scenario you're describing, where folks who are seeking guidance for a particular task are brushed aside to CPAN.

Usually, seekers are in search of a) syntactical or algorithmic assistance, or b) a task in need of a solution. The former is almost always answered with a bit of code and explanation. The latter will most often be resolved with a link to CPAN and general usage guidelines for the module in question. I have not seen the death of TIMTOWTDI, as you claim.

Update: removed P.S. comment, I confused the OP for vroom.

-fp

Comment on Re: Death and Return of TIMTOWTDI

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Re: Re: Death and Return of TIMTOWTDI by dakedesu (Scribe) on Jun 02, 2004 at 02:27 UTC
Well, maybe the wrong nodes just appear to me when I view this site. It is not so much the decent answers I am concerned with. A lot of the threads I read either deal with slightly trivial scripts, or are redundant code, and they nondecent answers replied. The nondecent answers are still littered in amongst some nice incite, so there is still hope. It is not really just here. Perhaps it is due to my learning curve hitting where it is, but when I see others answer with, "use the CPAN entry," I feel as though it might hold that person back as a programmer. I've seen another community(slightly less perl related, it is a gaming related development site), where posts similar in quality could earn bannings, because the sort of thing went on too long. One site, people just kept answering to perfectly decent questions stuff like, "Use linux," "use Mozilla," or use some different sort of software. Which really is only avoiding the question. I've also seen a few other perl communities where the staff instituded a rule of 'no CGI' (which I think really hurts them) and if the question does not fall into their narrow downed category of what to ask, or already has a module, you get a nice kick. I am seeing this CPAN thing at the stage of the former. Where, we are starting to get the people going, "oh just use this software," in reply to their problem when coding new software. Though I will admit, this site is not that bad. -- Jamie Payne	[reply]

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Re: Re: Death and Return of TIMTOWTDI
by dakedesu (Scribe) on Jun 02, 2004 at 02:27 UTC

Well, maybe the wrong nodes just appear to me when I view this site.

It is not so much the decent answers I am concerned with. A lot of the threads I read either deal with slightly trivial scripts, or are redundant code, and they nondecent answers replied. The nondecent answers are still littered in amongst some nice incite, so there is still hope.

It is not really just here. Perhaps it is due to my learning curve hitting where it is, but when I see others answer with, "use the CPAN entry," I feel as though it might hold that person back as a programmer.

I've seen another community(slightly less perl related, it is a gaming related development site), where posts similar in quality could earn bannings, because the sort of thing went on too long. One site, people just kept answering to perfectly decent questions stuff like, "Use linux," "use Mozilla," or use some different sort of software. Which really is only avoiding the question.

I've also seen a few other perl communities where the staff instituded a rule of 'no CGI' (which I think really hurts them) and if the question does not fall into their narrow downed category of what to ask, or already has a module, you get a nice kick.

I am seeing this CPAN thing at the stage of the former. Where, we are starting to get the people going, "oh just use this software," in reply to their problem when coding new software.

Though I will admit, this site is not that bad.

-- Jamie Payne

[reply]