On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 13:28, Uri Guttman <u...@stemsystems.com> wrote: >>>>>> "NA" == Nathan Arthur <nart...@rainskit.com> writes: > NA> from books/tutorials, from this list, and by just writing it. I spent > NA> a bunch of time with online tutorials and books before really getting > NA> started, so most of my interest in this list is about "real-life > NA> examples of perl" rather than "learning to program". > if you spent any time with the typical perl tutorial on the net, you > wasted it. maybe 3 or so of them are decent, the rest are garbage.
Maybe. But people think in many ways and sometimes things have to be explained differently for different people. That is why in a class, there will be a handful -- yes, not a lot of people -- who won't understand at the end. That's because we don't all think alike. Saying the other tutorials are garbage is quite harsh and a bit disrespectful to the authors who presumably meant well and didn't do it to sabotage Perl's reputation. Maybe they aren't helpful to the majority of people, but they may help a few people. Thanks to Google, those top 3 you mention will probably be ranked at the top, so the so-called "garbage ones" aren't going to negatively affect many people. > the formatting wars you are whining about are important. communication > is the goal here and if everyone posted however they wanted, not much > would happen. there are rules to email/usenet and they were created long > ago in ancient days and they are still valid. we read top to bottom so > post that way. we don't need to see the old emails fully quoted so edit > them (that rule came out of actual needs for less storage and > bandwidth. even though that isn't important anymore it is still a better > way to write emails). Yes/no. They are important, but one should realize that there are varying levels of adherence to such rules. Should we expect a mailing list to beginners to adhere to such posting rules or even coding rules as well as, let's say, the developers of Perl6? While I do agree that those rules are important, IMHO, I think before people complain about how someone posts, we ought to consider the audience. "Well, how else are they going to learn?", is perhaps what you would say. Well, if you complain about them too much, they'll leave Perl (let's face it -- they're beginners, so their initial investment in Perl was small so far) and is that the type of impression Perl experts should give? All I'm saying is that the rules of posting are important, but we ought to show some restraint. If we show restraint on one mailing list for beginners and not another one where everyone posts regularly, that isn't a bad thing. > the rules are those who contribute and help, the make the rules. lurkers > can jump in but their voices are usually discounted. it is that way > since otherwise it would become lord of the flies in perl. No. What makes this list are the beginners. Without them, there is no list -- or the list would be very different. And many of them are lurkers who jump in, post a question, and jump out. But, if the have a good impression from the replies from the question they asked, they might come in again months later. That's how the community can grow. If we leave it to just the people who "contribute and help", then it's no longer a list for beginners. It's for the contributors to post among themselves. The enforcement of the rules should be done to compromise between the contributors and the beginners...not just one side. Or am I mistaken? Ray -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
