StommePoes:

Under perl distributions, you may want to mention the cygwin package which has perl and many other things.

Under "Beyond Vanilla Perl", you may want to have a Databases section and list some of the popular packages (e.g. DBI, DBD::ODBC,...). I think I'd also create a Perl under Windows section with things like: Spreadsheet::WriteExcel, Spreadsheet::ParseExcel, Win32::OLE

...roboticus

Actually Spreadsheet::WriteExcel, Spreadsheet::ParseExcel both run perfectly fine on *nix as well, we use them all the time for $work on Linux and FreeBSD servers.

-stvn

stvn:

I didn't mean to imply that they run only on Windows. (I've used it for quite some time on Linux.) I suggested them for the Windows section because Excel is a Windows application, and the primary purpose of those packages (at least around here) is to interact with a file format familiar to many Windows users.

...roboticus

Hm, yes cygwin is good to add but even better are the Windows stuff you've added... I expect users of this forum to be more Windows users than *nix. Thanks!

But I have a question about DBI... should I still have links to stuff like DBI or should I keep it to stuff like DBIx::Class instead? Assuming people going through Perl Resources are either new to Perl or haven't done much with it?

Then again it could also very well be people who've ended up in a Perl shop, so maybe I should just add those too... they can go where I have DBIx::Class. And if I have a Databases section (sounds good), what else should be in there?

StommePoes:

I'd definitely keep DBI, as that's what I use. (I intend to try DBIx::Class and others sometime, but haven't had the need to do so yet.) For new users, the more recent packages may be preferable, so you might want to put DBI later in the list, so they can pick up on the newer ones.

As for your question about what else to put in the databases section, I'd probably point them at DBD::SQLite for small database jobs, as it's self contained. Oracle, Access, SQL Server and mySQL seem to get a lot of questions, so it seems worthwhile to point them at appropriate drivers. It may be worth while pointing them at specific perlmonks nodes (e.g. DBI Recipes, tutorial articles and CUFP articles on databases.)

Under your tutorials and articles section, you may want a subsection for "frequently encountered gotchas", like:

• Why it's stupid to `use a variable as a variable name', pt 1
• Why it's stupid to `use a variable as a variable name', pt 2
• Why it's stupid to `use a variable as a variable name', pt 3
• Far More Than Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know about Prototypes in Perl
• Perl Idioms Explained (A page of links to specific idioms...)
• Using Look-ahead and Look-behind (regex goodness)
• Coping with Scoping
• Yes, even you can use CPAN
• And many others ... (I've been grabbing these from my home page, and I'm sure other monks home pages have useful links.

...roboticus

Under Books, you should include Perl Best Practices by Damian Conway.

Good one. Why didn't I think of it when it's sitting on the bookshelf at home?? : ) Added.

Do you guys think I should just remove entirely the dubious/unknown tutorials and just replace them with some of the suggestions from roboticus? One thing I worry about is PerlMonks... looks a little 1999. I love for people to come here but hopefully they don't think it's a reflection of Perl (these may be web designers, possibly used to shinier sites from Ruby, Python or PHP). Also, PM is quite slow loading for me, so possibly also for other people. Sometimes it's a minute or more to get a page up.

And, can anyone give me any reasons to remove the "SitePoint Articles" stuff? Other than Attack of the Killer Bugs, which seems to still be relevant, the others either review old books or have old Perl How-to's that I can't tell if they (at this age) are giving bad advice now.

Under your Perl modules heading, I would add randyk's Browse and search CPAN. I often find its search capabilities superior, and Win32 PPM packages are listed in the module descriptions. randyk is also very responsive to requests for new PPMs (within reasonable limits).

Ok, I've got kobe's search and through that I found the CPAN FAQ that also seems to double as a pretty damn good resource in general.

In the thread, someone asked "where does a newbie start?" I think I've got that covered now as far as PM tuts, Small Quests for a Beginner, general FAQ and places to get modules in general.

I'm probably going to keep this going for this week for monk input (so until Friday 19 or Sat 20 March) before submitting what I have as a sort of RFC at the forums. After that point, it's probably going to be out of my hands. Thanks again, everyone. It's starting to look like something respectable.

• Moose
• Data::Visitor (this one is especially effective in combination with XML::Simple)
• List::AllUtils, for the following very useful functions(some of which are variations of map/grep which you don't want to write over and over again):
  • reduce
  • all
  • any
  • uniq
  • first,firstidx
  • mesh/zip,pairwise,eacharray,eacharray_ref

Thanks, I've Moose on there twice (heh)... I've been rearranging the HTML page all day today, so now I have a general "Modules" section near the top which mentions both Moose separately (it's kinda killer-app-ish) and Task::Kensho for those who are so new to Perl/CPAN they need help weeding.

I will check out the other two, but other than Moose, I'm kinda wavering on mentioning other specific modules (I know I have XML::Twig in there but it may not stay). I'm more hoping to weed out the bad stuff on there and get good listings of the groups Frameworks (Gantry and Rose are big question marks! and only just found Web::Simple), Templating Libraries and SQL/Database stuff that web guys are going to be especially interested in. I'm not even sure if I want Perl_Object_Environment to stay in there (having trouble figuring out what it does exactly, didn't sound like something general enough.. correct me if I'm wrong!).

Thanks, and keep them coming.

Edit/update Partially I also wanted to kind of address some of the comments both in the thread later down "Wow thats a lot of stuff to look at. Maybe somebody could rank it as to where a newbie might start?" as well as similar questions that have been floating around the forums (people making wild claims such as that "PERL doesn't have any frameworks, use Ruby/Python/PHP"). So, also addressing that a bit.

Using the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, I moved myself from level 1 to level 3 because of three main things.

• Perldoc site.
• The Perl Best Practices book.
• And this site right here: Perl Monks.

These are the triumvirate for me. Perldoc is the ultimate language reference. PBP is the ultimate style guide for when you are overwhelmed by TMTOWTDI. And Perl Monks is for everything else.

Note Well: I prefer to teach myself by running example code snippets and then reading specific reference material for more detail. I usually do not have the patience for tutorials with lots of exposition (for example, the Camel book and Learning Perl). If this is also your learning style, then I am hard pressed to think of anything more you would need to get a good grasp of base Perl.

Thanks, I've Moose on there twice (heh)... I've been rearranging the HTML page all day today, so now I have a general "Modules" section near the top which mentions both Moose separately (it's kinda killer-app-ish) Yep, Moose is a good app. and Task::Kensho for those who are so new to Perl/CPAN they need help weeding. I will check out the other two, but other than Moose, I'm kinda wavering on mentioning other specific modules (I know I have XML::Twig in there but it may not stay). I'm more hoping to weed out the bad stuff on there and get good listings of the groups Frameworks(Gantry and Rose are big question marks! and only just found Web::Simple)

I don't know very much about Gantry or Rose, I think they are not used very much nowadays. I think there's definitely a trend here ... right now , the following are very popular : Catalyst, Mojolicious,CGI::Application.

About the ones you mentioned Rose hasn't been updated since 2008 and I really haven't heard anything about Gantry(although I see the last release on cpan is 2010).

Templating Libraries and SQL/Database stuff that web guys are going to be especially interested in. I'm not even sure if I want Perl_Object_Environment to stay in there (having trouble figuring out what it does exactly, didn't sound like something general enough.. correct me if I'm wrong!).

POE is already in Task::Kensho which you mentioned earlier.

Thanks, and keep them coming.

Yes I'm sure you will have many suggestion, but the main thing is to identify what each suggested module does and see if there are overlaps and weed out unnecessary ones.

I've still got some books in the list which I have no idea if they should be in there. Can anyone comment on:

1. Writing Apache modules with Perl and C is this outdated or still good?
2. Mod_perl Cookbook not sure if this still works okay in these heady days of mod_perl2 and Apache2? It's on the books.perl.org list though
3. Developing Web Applications with Apache, MySQL, memcached, and Perl (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) there are no Amazon reviews on this. The forum has old articles about older Perl WROX books, but I don't know the author or the quality of Wrox in general. However it's definitely a topic of interest to people visiting the forums!
4. Network Programming with Perl is 1999, still good?

Thanks.