On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Raymond Wan <r....@aist.go.jp> wrote: > An extension to your reasoning is that there aren't just two groups of > users on this list -- advanced and newbies -- but multiple levels. > Beginners who don't follow the advanced programmers' rules may have > questions that intermediate programmers can answer who aren't as > nit-picky about the rules. Then, advanced programmers can direct > their attention to more immediate questions by people who write in a > way that they like and everyone is happy. How the question is asked > implicitly says who (which group) the question is for... > > Core Perl experts that think it's just them and beginners on the list > "risk" scaring people in the middle groups away, further making the > problem worse [for them]. No??
This whole discussion is stupid. :P The OP was a little off topic, but as others have said, Shlomi Fish is one of the more constructive posters on this list. And even ignoring that, the OP wasn't /that/ off topic. Maybe I only feel this way because it actually interests me to write open source software, but meh. The mailing list rules are about being fair to everyone. If you bottom post, quoting only what is relevant, then everyone can easily read through the thread without having to jump large sections of text, or downloading the same data numerous times for no reason. Not everybody has a high speed broadband connection and not everybody reads their mail from a Web browser or GUI client. I find the rules make a lot of sense and challenging them is just lazy, not logical. It doesn't even require much effort to bottom post properly so I find this argument extremely childish. Looking for software solutions on the Web I encounter a lot of poorly designed message boards where everybody just clicks on a 'quote' button. You end up with a horrible mess where the original message is copied n times throughout the thread, the second message n - 1 times, etc. It's just ugly and makes it very difficult to read. The same thing would happen with mailing lists if best practices weren't used. I pretty much won't participate on mailing lists that don't enforce such rules. It's just too much work to try. As for the experienced members correcting coding style, I really appreciate it. It helps you to learn how to write clean Perl a lot faster than if you struggle with it yourself. And not only cleaner looking code, but cleaner logic too. Helps you to spot errors that you wouldn't otherwise have spotted, etc. Reading this list, and reading those corrections, has quickly helped me to learn Perl and become comfortable both reading and writing Perl code. You don't always have to agree with the advice you're given, but it certainly doesn't hurt to be given it. </two_cents> /ontopic As for the OP's document, I personally found it way too long to read through when the thread was originally posted. :P That's perhaps a good thing, but I think a lighter introduction to the topic might benefit the document some. It seems you have to do a lot of reading to get anywhere, but maybe that's just because I've already acquired a lot of the introductory knowledge. :-/ I don't know. Looking at it again, and looking back on how long it took me to get to where I am now, I find it hard to believe that somebody that needs most of those questions answered would be able to read from start to finish and grasp most of what he had read. I imagine most would become lost or confused and quit. :P There is just a lot to those various topics and I think a more practical approach (i.e., tutorial-like) would help. It's really such a broad topic though, encompassing so many other complicated topics, that I can't imagine it working. Perhaps a better approach would be splitting it into many documents. -- Brandon McCaig <www.bamccaig.com> <bamcc...@gmail.com> V zrna gur orfg jvgu jung V fnl. Vg qbrfa'g nyjnlf fbhaq gung jnl. Castopulence Software <http://www.castopulence.org/> <bamcc...@castopulence.org> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
