note
mr.nick
<small><i>I've hesitated posting here since I've recently made an </i>ass<i> of myself, but here 'ya go ...</i></small>
<p>
I think that two valid points have been brought up in this thread. The first is that code posted to CPAN should be of a specific quality. As [HyperZonk] said, at best our is of "Beta" quality. This, to my mind, is not appropriate material to be posted to CPAN. There is some really good code here, <i>but I wouldn't want the </i>responsibility<i> of having my own code that I post here be available for public consumption</i> as with CPAN.
<p>
The implicit sense of responsilibity that comes from authoring something that's available for download might in fact cause a decrease in the amount of snippets that are available here. A person (me, for example ... though in my case this might be a good thing) might think twice about posting something if that code were instantly availible by the amount of people who hit download sites like CPAN. Like I said, those people are expecting a certain code-quality that isn't implied here.
<p>
The second point relates to the first: we need a mechanism that is relatively nonobtrusive; something not too different from the format we have now; what people are used to. If an extra burden is placed on people for formatting, pod'ing, whatever, it won't be a smooth or easy transition; and many just won't do it.
<p>
What we <i>really</i> need, I think, is some intelligent node-crawlers; a new SuperSuperSearch that is specifically designed to trawl though nodes looking for <code> tags, and the stuff between them.
<p>
Some of the best code around here are snippets, things like [Japhy]'s [id://96362|response] to a post of mine
<blockquote>
<code>
sub union {
my %seen;
@seen{@$_} = () for @_;
return keys %seen;
}
sub intersection {
my %seen;
for (@_) { $seen{$_}++ for @$_ }
return grep $seen{$_} == @_, keys %seen;
}
</code>
</blockquote>
<p>
This is the type of code that we should be concerned about being found. Unfortunately to do that, we need to come up with a method of cataloging and searching the code.
<p>
Something we can start easily enough with is to catalog by function name. That combined with a full-text search of the node (and possibly the entire thread) should turn up quite a few hits; especially since most people give their example subs logical and descriptive names (like, <i>ahem</i>, [Japhy]'s above-quoted example). Adding the ability to search in <code>## Comments</code> for text seperately than function name searching would be a really good method, I think.
<p>
So, what I'm saying is that we should think not off adding an outside (CPAN) method of accessing our code, but instead create a local method of searching it.
<p>
And after all, isn't that the True Way of a Monestary? Isn't there some sort of implied rule that you must be willing to <i>look</i> for the answer before receiving it? I've never known Librarian-monks to ask for outside help in cateloging their books :)
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<small><font face="Verdana"><font color="darkblue">mr.nick</font> ... </font></small>
</p>
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