In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Chaddaï Fouché <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The "Learning Perl 6" argument seems > equally contrived to me since anyway you don't need POD to understand > programming in Perl and I never actually learned POD until I wanted to > do a real module and document my little console utilities in Perl. That's exactly my argument. You didn't need to learn that because you weren't specifically doing anything with Pod. It doesn't even come up because it's something you have to affirmatively do, and it's not something that accidentally happens. > And if some do it, hell, I seriously > doubt that their program would be in the scope of the beginning of > "Learning Perl 6" !! You didn't put "-+-" there in previous versions, > did you ? I'm not sure what you mean mean by "- + -". Our current Learning Perl class starts off with a little Pod manipulation because we know that everyone (should!) has the perldoc along with their Perl. My actual experience trumps your serious doubt :) > The other "problem" is that if somehow a braindead guy (where would he > get the idea from, I never saw such a style) put his "=" in first > column expecting a assignment he won't get it... Seriously ? Are you > really allowing for such weirdness in introductory material to a > Language course ? How is that braindead? It's perfectly fine, allowable, and intended that a Perl 5 programmer can break statements over more than one line. It's not weird at all. I've taught a lot of beginner Perl classes, and people do all sorts of things. > So in my opinion, it would be fine to let slip that you can also > create some kind of comment/doc by putting a = in the first column in > the first chapter, and let the subject of POD for a later chapter. The problem is that once you bring something up, people want to know why you brought it up, and then they start playing with that point to see what you meant. All of a sudden, you're explaining a lot of stuff that doesn't get people any closer to completing a simple program. As I've said previously, the rule for Pod looks simple, but the rules for other things, such as strings, are now more complicated. However, Larry mentioned that the Pod extractor may do what it likes, but Perl shouldn't have to live with it's decisions about what is executable code and what isn't, so it may still work out.
