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RFC: How Tightly Coupled To Perl Must We Be?by marinersk (Priest) |
on Sep 04, 2013 at 11:26 UTC ( #1052294=perlmeditation: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
Hi, Corion. I've long admired your posts on Perlmonks, but the last line in your response to [1052251] (mod_auth_openid error!!!) confuses me.
If someone new to Perl tries to install a module and can't get it to work, is that really not sufficiently bound to Perl itself to warrant our assistance? I mean the question literally -- not trying to make a political statement or anything (my confession below notwithstanding). I may have the Mission of the Monastary wrong in my head, and if so, this represents an opportunity to adjust my understanding. I thought the point was to help people solve problems encountered while using Perl. Newbies, almost by definition, are going to have a fairly high rate of meta-Perl problems, rather than those of Perl proper. If we wish to help the newcomers to learn and embrace Perl, it seems to me that encouraging the use of modules is a healthy and necessary side trip from purely Perl discussions. Responses like this suggest we'd rather people keep reinventing wheels instead of cultivating a tendency to check CPAN, for example, since a newcomer isn't going to come pre-loaded with an understanding of how to use modules. They are, in case you've been using them so long that you've forgotten, moderately complex to use, and I'll stand up and say it: The necessary details are not generally intuitive. I must confess a sympathetic relationship to the OP, since I don't generally use CPAN modules for this very reason. In the early days, it seemed any time I tried to use one, I got errors I couldn't figure out, and nobody seemed to want to help me. So I was forced by circumstance to roll my own, a habit which continues to this very day. I feel like I'm out of step with "real" Perl developers, who seem to have some instinctive understanding of which modules are needed for what functions, how to install them, how to use them. Obversely, I can only seem to remember that there's some command somewhere which does the module install and maybe even downloads it and might even resolve dependencies but I'm not sure which in the long ago days did not work for me but I've successfully used once or twice somewhat more recently but can't remember the name of because nobody cultivated its use in me during my "formative years" in using Perl. . . . {breathe} . . . {breathe} . . . {breathe} . . . Since I've developed modules that do most of the ancilliary functions I need, the pain (real or imaginary is irrelevent) of using CPAN isn't worth the effort. So I continue to roll my own. Underfeatured, underfunctioned, often unrobust, and probably often buggy -- but a trusted and understood process. We've lost the chance to make a true Perl developer out of me. There isn't enough job market left to warrant the effort to re-learn. I am already eyeing my next language to replace this one. So -- I daresay I would like to raise the question: Is it really in the best interests of the Monastary to produce more almost-Perl-programmers like me, or would we like to cultivate effective and useful developers like yourself? If the latter, perhaps a slightly wider net is needed, better to aid those who might be encouraged into the Light.
Respectfully yours,
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