On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 03:32, Uri Guttman <u...@stemsystems.com> wrote: >>>>>> "RW" == Raymond Wan <r....@aist.go.jp> writes: > RW> Saying the other tutorials are garbage is quite harsh and a bit > RW> disrespectful to the authors who presumably meant well and didn't do > RW> it to sabotage Perl's reputation. Maybe they aren't helpful to the > RW> majority of people, but they may help a few people. > > when they are full of mistakes, wrong coding ideas, bad writing, no > connection to the perl community, etc. etc. there are dozens of them > like this. i have reviewed many on usenet (search google).
Yes, I understand what you're saying. But maybe you can see my side for a bit. And rather than repeating myself, let me try a concrete example. The standard way to teach pointers is usually some kind of picture with boxes with one half with a value and the other half an arrow pointing elsewhere. In some class, if you do this, maybe 90% of the people who have any chance of getting it, will get it from this picture. (Let's face it...maybe some people will never have a chance...I'm ignoring them. :-) ). The remaining 10% may need to be taught about pointers another way...through actual code or something that I can't think of right now. It isn't like this 10% is hopeless; perhaps they just need to get through the class with pointers, and go on to excel in theoretical computer science. Having a variety of ways of conveying something may help this 10%. And since it's on the Internet, it isn't occupying anyone's disk drive (except maybe the server which they've paid money for). It certainly isn't affecting you. But if they come to the mailing list complaining about how something doesn't work? Well, explaining to them the correct way with a wrong way from someone else might help the learning process. I realize many people on this list (perhaps yourself) may not thinking the learning process is important...you just want to send one reply to solve their problem and move on to the next one. But for some, the learning part is important and that might encourage them to stick with Perl or the mailing list. As for your comment about not being part of the Perl community, you make it sound like being in the Perl community is an exclusive club. It isn't. Thanks to the Internet, anyone who can write HTML can give their 2 cents about Perl. This environment helps both Perl and open source in general. So, I don't quite agree with that the author of tutorials has to be "part of the Perl community". If so, I definitely am not in it since I haven't yet received my membership card! :-) While I'm at it, I'll whinge about something. When I'm stuck on something related to Perl, I don't know if anyone realizes this too, but many web page authors literally copy the examples from the Camel book. Whether that is ethical or illegal, I leave it between them and O'Reilly. But what annoys me is that I sometimes want to see another example other than the one in the book, but page upon page gives everything you complain about -- they're correct and probably by people in the Perl community, but the examples are not original. There are pages out there that have mistakes, but occasionally, they offer a different example that gives me that "Oh!" moment. One tiny advantage of not being in the Perl community, perhaps?? > RW> Thanks to Google, those top 3 you mention will probably be ranked at > RW> the top, so the so-called "garbage ones" aren't going to negatively > RW> affect many people. > > not at all. google doesn't always show the best ones as there are so > many. i don't go searching for them. on usenet or other places > (including here) newbies will claim they are using some site to learn > perl. i go there to check it out and i get sick. Well, Google works by the Page Rank algorithm, so rather than getting sick, you and other people who think like you can link to them to increase their score. That may also include the page Shlomi refers to occasionally. > RW> Yes/no. They are important, but one should realize that there are > RW> varying levels of adherence to such rules. Should we expect a mailing > RW> list to beginners to adhere to such posting rules or even coding rules > RW> as well as, let's say, the developers of Perl6? > > not adhering when the first get here. adhering AFTER they are told about > netiquette and email quoting styles. there is a difference. Hmmmmm, you're missing my point. My point is why do you expect newbies to *want* to adhere to such rules? Put it another way, suppose you are a university lecturer teaching computer science and want to get the coding style of students up. But how much you can do depends on whether it is your first year class or your fourth year class. Your first year class is full of lurkers who may end up changing their major. Your fourth year class presumably has decided that CS is for them and they're more likely to listen to the rules and styles. My point is that this mailing list is like the first year class every day throughout the year [some of you might say it's more like a primary school class :-) ]. So, how much emphasis is places on the rules should depend on the audience. > you didn't get my point. the answers come from the core regular > experts. the questions from the beginners. so the experts make the > rules. if the newbies made the rules, nothing would get done. > > this has happened in every other forum in network history. you need > rules (both technical and social) for this to work well. there is no way > around it. And again, you didn't get my point. :-) We might as well write in different languages... ;-) I did not suggest newbies make the rules. You are only presenting two different extremes -- either the core experts makes the rules or the newbies make the rules. What I'm saying is that the core experts can make and enforce the rules but *while* keeping in mind that the mailing list loses its name without the newbies. My point is to show restraint in terms of pointing out the rules or else the list will just have core experts talking among themselves. 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