2 Posts Lost over the years that you might enjoy

[Monkomatic]

While wandering through the monastery catacombs I dusted off 2 gems some fellow brothers may enjoy. Not doing this to Vote whore. I do this in appreciation of the help I have received over my time here.

http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=149675

The First Letter of Erudil to the Monasterians
1Erudil, a hacker of Perl, To Vroom, the saints, and all the dwellers of the Monastery: 2Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance. 3It is now a little more than two years since I joined this community of believers in Perl, and my appreciation of this place and its custodians and members continues to grow. 4Brothers and sisters, I beseech you to continue fighting the good fight, showing patience and understanding to those who come to the gates of our blessed Monastery, bereft of clues and ignorant of our ways. 5Do not rebuke them with harsh words such as "RTFM", but rather lead them gently - with URLs - so that they may learn wisdom. 6Suffer the newbies to come unto us, instructing them of the many truths contained within the good book. 7For who among us has never been in a state of error or ignorance? 8Consider carefully the following: 9Blessed are they that "use strict;", for their typos shall be caught before trouble arises. 10Blessed are they that use "-w", for Perl itself shall show them the error of their ways. 11Blessed are they that "use CGI;", for their parameters shall be passed without error. 12Blessed are they that use CPAN, for exceedingly large shall be the number of wheels that they do not re-invent.		13Blessed are they that understand regexs, for they shall waste no time trying to parse HTML. 14Blessed are you, when "they" insult you and ridicule you, and speak all manner of evil against you for using Perl, for great will be your reward when your project is finished in less time, and with less effort. 15If there are those who refuse to accept our wonderful message, do not allow them to draw you into a fruitless flame war, and thereby bring disrepute upon yourselves and our Monastery. 16Remember well: "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?". 17If this is an area of weakness for you, as it is for me, then I would encourage you, my fellow Monasterians, to consider a vow of silence as I have done, speaking rarely and with words carefully chosen to edify and inform.a 18Brothers and sisters, I commend you once again for restoring my faith in the idea of a viable, on-line community. And now, 19May your syntax always be correct and your algorithms efficient. 20May your references point to good data, and may you grow in the knowledge and understanding of our beloved language, Perl. 21Amen and amen.
a 17 Some early manuscripts do not have verse 17

[BrowserUk]

I have the greatest respect for the art and wisdom of Erudil; but... I think he got a few things wrong.

1. 12). CPAN is huge and contains a lot of good. But also, a lot of dross.

   And much of the very best is a result of someone taking it upon themselves to reinvent something that already existed. But doing it right; or simply better.

2. 13) There is a distinct difference between "parsing html";

   and "extracting some subtext from within some text", that may actually or superficially resemble html.

3. 16) & 17) are often misinterpreted.

   There is a common mis-assumption that choosing not to back down on your convictions is "losing one's cool", "uncontrolled emotion" or "feeding the trolls". Which completely fails to consider the possibility that standing up for what you believe to be true could be a desirable and admirable trait. Even to those that do not share the conviction.

There's an old saying (or maybe just a song lyric?), that goes: perspective is everything. It's wrong. Perspective is important. Recognising that perspective changes with viewpoint is more so.

[Anonymous Monk]

Yes. Erudil's node is great. But why don't you link directly to that node? So much easier than copying it. And then we could easily upvote the original node - and not your copy ...

Here is the original: 1st Monasterians

[luis.roca]

Hello Monkomatic,

FYI: I moved your post from Seekers of Perl Wisdom to here in Meditations where it's more appropriate. Also take a look at What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information? so people can go directly to the original posts.

And yes, 1st Monasterians is also one of my very favorite nodes by Erudil as well as camel code.

[jdporter]

Big, big negatives to you for making a post (two, actually) just to copy the contents of somebody else's posts. Have you ever heard of a forum where this is acceptable? Firstly, you should only have linked to the nodes of interest. Secondly, posting a node just to draw people's attention to "2 Posts Lost over the years that you might enjoy", without adding any value whatsoever, is exceedingly lame. Use your homenode or scratchpad for that. Or just mention it in the chatterbox. Come on, man. Use some sense.

[Anonymous Monk]

Which sense?

[Anonymous Monk]

I don't agree. Monkomatic Cited where the posts came from, and did not claim that they where his own work, so this is not plagurisum.

These posts are gems, that have been mostly forgotten. Monkomatic stumbed across them by chance, and thought they deserved a wider audence. I agree. Had he put links on his home node, or posted them on chatterbox then hardly anyone would have seen them. If he had posted a short meditation with just the links, and not the node text then many people would have missed them. By posting the full text everyone who visits the Meditations page gets to enjoy them. Monkomatic has done a public service by re-posting them.

In my view, this thread should be front paged, so that all can see these jems.

[Argel]

He should have quoted a small sample from each and then a link to the actual nodes for the rest. Copying an entire work and then sourcing it is at best in very poor taste, and at worst could be a copyright violation.

[Argel]

Off-topic: So what happened to Erudil? According to his home node the last time he was here was "2008-09-18 08:21:27 CDT (2 years ago)" and the last time he posted was 2002! :-(

Update: That's great guys, but I was asking what happened to him? Why did he leave? Why did he stop posting? Just that busy?

[sundialsvc4]

Some things bear repeating.   And, let us always remember that TMTOWTDI, including the way that one chooses to create edifying blog-posts!   Even when one Monk does not do what you would have them to do exactly as you would have them do it, TMOWTDI, and if it did not do grievous harm, consider Silence.   The water Flows peacefully by, whether you choose to deposit Something into it or not.

The only axiom I might add to this interesting Meditation is:   “Look twice, code <never|once>.”   No matter what it is that you are doing, you are not the first one to have done it.   CPAN is a huge repository of what is called prior art, and as such it is sometimes a source of things that are to be used, and sometimes of things that are to be ... learned from, but otherwise avoided.   Both of these uses make CPAN a resource well to be studied, and to be looked-to first.   Perhaps a messy piece of coding might be entirely avoided.   Perhaps, a far better way of tackling a problem might be seen in someone else’s previous work.   Perhaps you discover in-advance something very smelly that otherwise would have soiled your boots.