in reply to RE: Father and Son
in thread Father and Son

Hmmm... Someone obviously thought I was being snitty here, when in fact I didn't intend to be.

While I don't mind perl poetry that doesn't compile, or even perl poetry that looks as if it was code and doesn't compile; perl poetry that pretends to be code but doesn't even look reasonable, but appears instead to be simply stringing a poem together for the most part with a bunch of double colons, needs to be commented on.

Nevertheless, I didn't vote it down, as an attempt at perl poetry is better than no perl poetry; but perhaps I should have been more specific in my criticism...

( I also probably would have been less bothered by it had the subject matter had been perl-related.)

As it is what we have is bad code, and bad construction, mediocre (at best) poetry, with no reason to perlized, and perlization done poorly... Can anyone explain why someone would waste a vote voting my post down? Too short? They liked the poem? though I was bashing the author? It's incomprhensible to me.

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RE: RE: RE: Father and Son (Ozymandias: Perl Poetry)
by Ozymandias (Hermit) on Jul 12, 2000 at 20:13 UTC
    Hmmm. I didn't vote your post --, but looking things over, I can see why someone else might have. Let's look at the section; Perl Poetry. Well, that could mean anything. Poems about Perl, poems written in Perl, normal poems in english (or any other human language) translated to Perl, Perl programs that output poetry, poems in english (or any other human language, or computer language for that matter) about programming in Perl without actually using Perl. And that's just the off-the-top-of-my-head list.

    Now here we have a poem which, while not exactly up to the standards of a Shakesperean sonnet, is at least better than many of the offerings here. And at least the attempt was made to make it look like Perl. And there's another thing about that...

    This poem has one quality, intentional or not, that makes me appreciate it more than most of these; it's an excellent representation of code, even if it is somewhat inaccurate. And what else is poetry, if not a representation? It's not meant to be taken literally. Here you have a poem which uses form and structure to suggest Perl code, and attempts to convey the feeling of teaching, inspiring, and leading someone in learning the skills of life - and with the structure, you could interpret that to mean the skills of life as a Perl coder. What could be more appropriate to this site? But your only comment was to make (what appeared to be) a snide comment about the poet's coding ability.

    - Ozymandias

[reply]

      First, I totally agree with your short list of Poems that could fall under the category of Perl Poetry. The illustrations that I gave were merely representative of the sub-genre that I believed the poet was trying to use.

      Secondly, I will ammend the statement from my previous post to say that "I definately should have been more detailed in my response." Criticism is pointless unless it is constructive, intended to either point out possible flaws in logic construction imagery or grammer, and how to correct them; or to suggest possible improvements in the same... all with the understanding that as a reader one may not know the authors thoughts and suggestions, and hence one's suggestions may not be applicable at all.

      Instead, the poem struck me as poor, and without analyzation or suggestion, I made a comment, that while not intended to be mean, was certainly negative. I hope that my second comment made up for that by pointing out exactly what I thought was wrong, and by implication how to correct it.

      AgentKelly, I apologize for that first post.

[reply]

In Section Perl Poetry