The Return of the Son of theMecha-Robotic Copy of the Clone of the Evil Twin of the Sequel to the Code Catacombs (episode 12)

[erikharrison]

As I become a more adept Perl hacker, I have two modules that I'm really excited about. There not quite ready for prying eyes ( and might not be for a month or two yet ) but when they are, I'd like perlmonks to give them a good review. It's not that I trust certain users so much as the community effect is very pwerful here. Open Source projects get reviewes by the Open Source community, fair enough, but the sheer concentrated force of so many Perl coders here at the monastery is to powerful to be ignored. Besides, I feel that you guys (and gals) are more responsible for the darn things than I am - you taught me, and have been the best teacher I ever had.

However, there isn't a great mechanism for module review of this kind here. Here is what I see as my current options:

• Post the module as a CUFP. I think that the problems here are fairly obvious. CUFP really is jsut snippets grown up.
• Post it as a Meditation. A better option to be sure, and I think the current de facto standerd. Obviously this is going to get irritating if you want to have several modules checked in sequence. There are cases where I think that posing as a Meditation is the best bet - for example tachyon's RFC CGI.pm refactoring was perfect. Not only were we talking about a module review, but also a review of one of our cultural maxims and module authoring style.
• Post to your scratchpad and yell out a cattle call in the CB. This is a good low impact method. You can /msg anyone you want to specifically check the code, and then get everyone online at the time of posting to review it. The benefit of being both general purpose and low impact is nice - no one can critisize you for it (no one reasonable anyway) and you get your code reviewed.

The problems I see are that the first two are often ill fitted to the task, and would quickly become overrun by module RFCs if they were officially approved, and the third doesn't get the depth of analyisis of, say, a SOPW, because there is no thread associated with scratchpad entries, and scratchpads are watched with careful eye.

Perhaps I am being selfish in wanting to be able to call the full force of the Monastery onto module review, but if not, then I think that a new section or refurbishing of an old section is the best option. I am aware that a fully grown and active new section means additional database expansion, more processor time and the cooling of the earth. I'd like to not loose anything the Monastery currently has to allow room for a Code Review section, so if there are serious implementation issues consider this Discussion withdrawn.

My feelings on the matter can be put this way: PerlMonks is an intensified and accelerated version of the Perl community proper. I'd like to see that, just as we have something to parallel the mailing lists (SOPW, Meditations), the conferences (the CB), the extensive and ongoing documentation (Q&A), the funny sigs (Obfu and Poetry), and cultural introspection (Discussion) so should we mirror the cultural aspects of the CPAN which are generosity and peer review.

Cheers,
Erik

Light a man a fire, he's warm for a day. Catch a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life. - Terry Pratchet

[cjf]

there isn't a great mechanism for module review of this kind here.

What's wrong with the Code Catacombs now? The only thing I can think of is that it isn't the most prominent of sections. You can't frontpage posts and new entries are a fair ways down the Newest Nodes page. Still it seems like a decent place to post modules for review.

Perhaps something along the lines of Increasing Visibility of Reviews and Tutorials but for the Code Catacombs would be in order.

[Aristotle]

I agree with the sentiment. If something that's already in place can serve a desired purpose, it's better than adding a new feature.

Makeshifts last the longest.

[erikharrison]

Actually, that's pretty much what I'm proposing. But an additional issue with the Code Catacombs is that the docs (for those of you have been around awhile, and might not have noticed) tell us that the CC are being (informally) phased out with the invention of code tags. If the CC are to be where we do this (and I have no problem with that) I'd like to see the Perlmonks docs changed to reflect this, and they be given greater profile. I'd like to see the CC become the official place for this activity and I'd like to see this sort of behavior encouraged. That last part is what I think is most important.

Cheers,
Erik

Light a man a fire, he's warm for a day. Catch a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life. - Terry Pratchet