2009/9/11 Raymond Wan <r....@aist.go.jp>: > Perldoc is somewhat hard to get into...but it's the manual for a programming > language, so that's expected; I don't think having pages to color and draw > on would be a feasible idea for the next update. :-)
I don't think you should tar every perldoc page with the same brush. Different pages have different purposes. Some pages are reference manual material -- so that you can look stuff up and quickly get information on particular features. Reference manuals are great for experts to get information on specific things -- regex metacharacters, special variables, etc -- but terrible for learning from. Some pages are tutorial material -- to introduce you to a concept gently, one idea at a time, and with examples. These are great to learn from, but not so good for finding specific information. Both types of page are necessary, and in perldoc I have found that both do their job well. The only difficulty I can imagine with perldoc is that there isn't a clear enough delineation between the two categories, so a beginner might find a reference manual when what they need is a tutorial or vice versa. > And #4, perldoc and anything like perldoc is competing with things like > Google. Some people want to find the Perldoc pages; others might rather > find a blog or a newsgroup posting discussing the problem -- everyone learns > differently. If you want specific information, such as the purpose of $|, nothing beats a reference manual. Anything else will waste your time. If you want to learn about a topic, then tutorials, newsgroup discussions, blogs etc are the way to go. Phil -- "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone." --Bjarne Stroustrup -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
