Yeah, you make a good point and I shouldn't have glossed over that. Those sites, for the most part, are irrelevant and opaque to a beginner. (I don't think perldoc.com existed when I started or I would've glommed right onto it but only if I'd know what "perldoc" meant to begin with; I use it today to keep version differences straight b/t work and home.)
Few of the major docs or sites are aimed at beginners or newcomers to programming; after all, how do you explain pack to a non-programmer? Again, I think this is testament to what a wide and open appeal Perl holds; as well as how approachable it is. I've tried teaching myself some C and Lisp, among other things, from public docs and tutorials and Perl is a cake-walk by comparison. The docs are opaque and slippery for beginners, though, and people who come to Perl from C or Java or whatever don't/can't really see it. I'm not criticizing--the quality of the docs you get for free is immense--just giving the perspective of the BA side of the fence.
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I don't care *what* you criticize, as long as you make accurate well informed criticisms. So is your main point that perl.com and perl.org are hard to use for the beginner, or that perl lacks an appropiate "beginner's" tutorial?
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If you ask me, from my personal experience, probably a bit of both. i am still confused by perl.com. Admittedly though i havn't really looked at perldoc. When i first started i looked at it, and was overwhelmed by the amount of info there. But (at least for the moment) perldoc.com is down anyway...
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