Greetings all,
I have been playing with the idea of writing a few tutorials about some useful tips common to web development like "storing and retrieving binary data in a database" or "using Perl with Flash". Yet, since there are already tutorials out there that deal with these subjects either directly or indirectly, I would like to avoid re-inventing the wheel.
Would anyone else, aside from myself, be interested in reading reviews of offsite tutorials and perhaps having some commentary as to how the concepts could be applied using Perl?
Immediatley Florian Dittmer's tutorial Binary Data + MySQL + PHP How to Store Images Directly in the Sql Database on PHPBuilder springs to mind as a well written and well thought out tutorial that could be applied to any language. I would therefore rather refer to his article than simply rewriting/rehashing it (the whole give credit where credit is due credo).
Granted, I have my own methodologies I follow as a means of making these concepts work, but then again so would anyone, and therein lies the impetus for the offsite tutorial review concept.
I'm confident that most monasteries could handle the non-Perl aspects of such tutorials and simply glean what is requisite to accomplish their specific tasks or goals. Anyone that would be having trouble would have the benefit of a collective threaded review of the concepts offered up by fellow Monks.
Perhaps create another section under Reviews to house such postings?
Thoughts?

-injunjoel
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use." -Galileo

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Offsite Tutorial Reviews?
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jul 18, 2004 at 01:54 UTC

    Why not start with links on your homepage for now? If that grows too unwieldy, we can figure out a better place for it later.

[reply]
Re: Offsite Tutorial Reviews?
by Anonymous Monk on Jul 18, 2004 at 06:58 UTC
    a well written and well thought out tutorial that could be applied to any language

    I beg to disagree.

    Thet tutorial that you claim as an example has several negative points that we in the Monastery usually consider bad practice and advise against:

    • Mixing the program flow with the user interface. The code given is a horrible mix of PHP and HTML, something that a good programmer should avoid like the plague.
    • Using language variables embedded in SQL query. The infamous "SQL injection" comes from people accustomed to this practice
    • Using a system call without checking its result.

    The works in our Tutorials page have passed the scrutiny of the Monastery, which is quick in pointing out problems and suggesting corrections. Had your exemplar tutorial been proposed here, it would have been torn to pieces in a couple of minutes.

    Not to discourage you, but please come up with some better examples. We Perl Monks are, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, people of simple tastes, we are always satisfied with the best. {grin}

    BTW, our Tutorials already include links to (carefully chosen) external works.

[reply]
      Greetings again,
      You bring up a very good point in regards to the tutorial link I provided but I feel you missed my intended concept. My desire is|was to guide readers through the concepts presented in these offsite tutorials, and perhaps make suggestions regarding the
      "several negative points that we in the Monastery usually consider bad practice and advise against"

      In fact the list you posted is exactly the sort of review of an offsite tutorial that I would hope for is the proposed section. Allow Monasterians the chance to refine or even rework the concepts presented and give our usual deliberate, contemplative and catholic suggestions for others to learn from. Simply because part of a tutorial is inefficient does not make all its suggestions invalid (?: throwing the baby out with the bath water if you will). I think there are a great many things to learn from anyone willing to teach, even though they may not be the best at it. In my opinion learning is more about the student's ability to learn than about the teachers ability to teach. I know people who learn life lessons from stubbing their toe and others who couldn't learn compassion from Christ... but I will leave that for another discussion.

      -injunjoel
      "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use." -Galileo
[reply]
Galileo (OT)
by japhy (Canon) on Jul 18, 2004 at 02:37 UTC
    o/` God endows us with sense and intellect /
    God endows us with reason we neglect /
    And despite the abolition by the current inquisition /
    Of any intuition which they don't choose /
    When it comes to God, I find /
    I can't believe that He designed /
    A human being with a mind... /
    He's not supposed to use. o/`
    _____________________________________________________
    Jeff japhy Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and perl hacker
    How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart
[reply]

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