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Re^3: Best practice or cargo cult?

by Herkum (Parson)
on Jun 21, 2006 at 16:31 UTC ( [id://556716]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^2: Best practice or cargo cult?
in thread Best practice or cargo cult?

Until PBP, there was not a single Perl book which had focused on writing better standardized code. Most of the books that I have seen are little more than an overview of many subjects and do not go into any depth. A good example of this is Advanced Perl Programming, Second Edition. From the table of Contents, for Template Tools (Chapter 3) it introduces,

  1. Formats and Text::Autoformat
  2. Text::Template
  3. HTML::Template
  4. HTML::Mason
  5. Template Toolkit
  6. AxKit

You have given them 6 options but not much insight into what problem they are going to solve. You could argue that a person should look at them all and make your own decision. On the other side, you have not given the user information on how to develop an application or increase productivity. This sort of material is at best shallow and useless after reading it once. (In comparision, I will go back and look things up again in PBP periodically).

Damian got an overall concensus on his thoughts and solutions from others and wrote a book on it. Damian Conway did a lot of the work but he did not do it alone. The thing that PBP actually provides are real solutions to common problems (example: use Readonly vs. use constants). That is something that other books just don't even address and leave me turned off from even looking at them.

To imply that somehow he has destroyed discussion because of the title and being an authorative figure is being dishonest. There is nothing there that prevents you from writing your own book except your own motivations, skill as a writer and a someone to publish your book.

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Re^4: Best practice or cargo cult?
by Juerd (Abbot) on Jun 21, 2006 at 17:16 UTC
    Again I state that PBP is a wonderful book. That doesn't mean I agree with everything in it. Sometimes, like on the issue of using /smx by default, I even think that PBP gives bad advice.

    Damian got an overall concensus on his thoughts and solutions

    Concensus requires much more than any single person...

    To imply that somehow he has destroyed discussion because of the title and being an authorative figure is being dishonest. There is nothing there that prevents you from writing your own book except your own motivations, skill as a writer and a someone to publish your book.

    I said that PBP at least partly destroyed freedom and discussion, and stand by that. It's become much harder to program in your own favourite style. Many businesses adopted PBP fully because it's much easier to pick a book than to think about things yourself.

    I've never had to defend that I don't use /xms, I've never had to defend that I don't use inside-out objects, I've never had to defend that I use normal Perl constants, I've never had to defend that I want to keep source filters out of production code at all cost. But now, all these things require a lot of discussion in which usually the conclusion is predetermined because it's printed in a book written by an authorative person.

    I believe that this was never Damian's intent, but that doesn't change that PBP has in fact taken away some of the Perl fun for me.

    If I wanted to align my code along such strict and sometimes silly guidelines, there are other programming languages that would be much better for me.

    I think a book like PBP is really great, but that PBP takes things too far. WAY too far. But it's still a wonderful book that many people can learn a lot from.

    Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap', perl6_server => 'feather' }

      Damian got an overall concensus on his thoughts and solutions
      Concensus requires much more than any single person...
      Starting at page xx, PBP lists over two dozen other people, many of them very well known and highly regarded in the Perl community, whose advice and feedback I sought as I designed and wrote the book. Most of them read the entire book before it was finalized; most of them argued numerous suggestions at length and in great detail; most of them convinced me to change one or more of the guidelines in some substantial way.

      What's in the book is the concensus of a large number of very talented and highly experienced people. People like Abigail, chromatic, Paul Fenwick, Uri Guttman, Trey Harris, Steven Lembark, Andy Lester, Jacinta Richardson, Randal Schwartz, and Peter Scott (to name ten at random). Like you, they didn't always agree with every solution I suggested. But they did concede that the issues I raised were genuine problems for many Perl programmers; problems that demanded consideration, discussion, and ultimately the adoption of some standardized and reliable solution.

      I encourage you--and everyone else--to criticize and debate the guidelines I've suggested. It is, however, incorrect to imply that those guidelines aren't the result of extensive consultation, collaboration, and collective experience.

        Concensus requires much more than any single person...
        Starting at page xx, PBP lists over two dozen other people

        My remark was meant as a linguistic one, but I can see it can be interpreted in multiple ways.

        It is, however, incorrect to imply that those guidelines aren't the result of extensive consultation, collaboration, and collective experience.

        I never meant to imply that. My apologies if it did appear that way.

        Still, I do wonder if defaulting to /msx is concensus or the opinion of a few. I've certainly never encountered many people expressing this opinion before PBP came out.

        Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap', perl6_server => 'feather' }

Re^4: Best practice or cargo cult?
by Asim (Hermit) on Jun 21, 2006 at 17:02 UTC
    Until PBP, there was not a single Perl book which had focused on writing better standardized code.

    Although I agree with your overall point, I must stand up for one of our own, Merlyn, whose work with Hall on Effective Perl Programming was a great help to my Perl coding skills. It's a book very similar to PBP in a number of ways, although it's not as comprehensive; it's sort of (in my mind) a cross between PBP and Perl Cookbook, and (if I recall the latter's pub date) pre-dates both.

    ----Asim, known to some as Woodrow.

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