Re: Handy dandy CPAN pollution

[suburbanantihero]

I don't disagree with your observations of the module being buggy. You posted your review of it both here and to CPAN's bug tracker, great.

It is possible to offer constructive helpful criticism without being so inflammatory. Instead of helping to facilitate progress, your comments will more likely cause separation and conflict.

Perhaps he wrote a buggy module. Perhaps it works great on his system in the circumstances in which he uses it.

Perhaps his code is not as efficient as you could write it, but the beauty of Perl has always been that there is more than one way to do it. If you want to help the advancement of Perl and CPAN, offer him constructive examples of how something may be written more efficiently.

Where the name is concerned: open source project have all kinds of screwy names. How about Perl, Apache, PHP Nuke, Jakarta, Tomcat and Ant. Heck, just look on freshmeat.net any given day for bizarre names.

It is up to the PAUSE moderators to approve or disapprove name spaces. When I first submitted the module registration DBIx::Loop, Tim Bunce kicked me right and left until we ended up with DBIx::FetchLoop.

In the comments here, you were quite full of righteousness over the level you've reached here. Pride is not constructive and it will not benefit you in the long run. I implore you to stop and think about the best possible solution for an issue and figure out how to reach it without causing conflict.

[Juerd]

If you want to help the advancement of Perl and CPAN, offer him constructive examples of how something may be written more efficiently.

I did. By pointing to other, much better modules, and by rewriting his code as regexes that are much more efficient than the original code. Doesn't matter much, though. This module simply does not belong on CPAN.

Where the name is concerned: open source project have all kinds of screwy names.

Bizarre names are good. Bizarre namespaces in Perl modules are not (even HandyDandy would have been better than Handy::Dandy.)

It is up to the PAUSE moderators to approve or disapprove name spaces.

PAUSE apparently is not moderated. I have yet to see any sign of that. I'd like strict moderation of CPAN, and I'd like to see my modules in the (still manually maintained) module list, but anyone can upload anything, and module registrations seem to be ignored.

In the comments here, you were quite full of righteousness over the level you've reached here.

Excuse me? The level I have reached on PerlMonks has no meaning at all, anyone can be a saint. That I released a few modules to CPAN also means nothing, anyone can upload modules (as once again made clear). Where do you see me being proud? I'm only proud to not have put my Handy::Dandy-like modules on CPAN. (Yes, of course I wrote code like that too when I began learning Perl. But I never had the guts to release it. That's a good thing, I know now.)

I implore you to stop and think about the best possible solution for an issue and figure out how to reach it without causing conflict.

I already thought about solutions, and asked TOMMY to remove the module from CPAN. It is the best (and in my opinion only) solution to the problem that is Handy::Dandy. I'm not trying to cause any conflict, but it appears the word 'fool' does have that impact.

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[Anonymous Monk]

I already thought about solutions

Well, here's your chance to apply them. I assume you'll be more than willing to help him fix it right? You wouldn't just blast someone and then walk away when they request assistance, would you?

I'm not trying to cause any conflict,

Read your root post again. If that's not trying to cause conflict (a very bad kind of conflict IMHO) I don't know what is.

anyone can be a saint.

Yes, I think you've proven that.

I'd like strict moderation of CPAN,

Who's going to do that? How will disputes be resolved? What gives one person the right to prevent another from sharing their code in an open forum like CPAN? If people can't be bothered to do QA on a module before using it, they deserve the consequences.

I don't buy the "Gives perl a bad name" argument either. What's next? Trying to prevent them from using established protocols to distribute their code?

[Juerd]

Well, here's your chance to apply them.

It's good to see that TOMMY++ asks what we think about it. It appears my post wasn't useless. However, I'm not into OO, and don't think procedural and OO interfaces should be mixed the way OOorNo does. But since it's documented now (that's the way to go, Tommy!), I'll read the documentation to find out how and when the module can be useful. Until then, I'm not able to say anything more about it than I did in my original post in this thread.

Who's going to do that? How will disputes be resolved? What gives one person the right to prevent another from sharing their code in an open forum like CPAN? If people can't be bothered to do QA on a module before using it, they deserve the consequences.

A voting or reviewing system on search.cpan.org would be great. Maybe a namespace should be introduced for new modules that haven't been reviewed yet.

I don't buy the "Gives perl a bad name" argument either. What's next? Trying to prevent them from using established protocols to distribute their code?

CPAN is one of Perl's strengths. Without CPAN, Perl wouldn't be half as useful as it is now. CPAN is not good because code is shared with it. It is good because good code is shared with it.

- Yes, I reinvent wheels.
- Spam: Visit eurotraQ.