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Re: this place should define a relation to CPAN soon

by rchiav (Deacon)
on Jul 16, 2001 at 00:21 UTC ( [id://96894]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to this place should define a relation to CPAN soon

I think I might be missing something here, because I've never used this site to look for canned modules or other pieces of code. What I've used it for, and what I thought the purpose of the site is, is to help me (and everyone else) write better code.

Yes, there are a lot of gifted individuals here. And most, if not all of those that I'd consider to be gifted have published CPAN modules. And those that are writing code that's worth while and posting it to this site are well aware of CPAN, and it's completely their choice as to whether or not they submit it there.

The code posted here, I've either found enlightening or down right amazing. Now if I want something to do the dirty work for me, I'll go search CPAN. It would have never crossed my mind to search perlmonks to find a module.

All that being said, it would be nice if things like Cool Uses for Perl, Snippets, and Craft had some sort of tree structure that was browseable. Not in an attempt to become another CPAN, but to make finding help on how to solve a problem easier.

For example, If I was looking for some help on NT domain management, beeing able to easily find that code would be helpful. Yes, there's search and Super Search, but that's not going to catch everything... and maybe not the node you needed most.

The downside is time. Someone would have to manage and maintain this to keep it clean, or there would be no purpose in doing it.

Rich

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: this place should define a relation to CPAN soon
by mr.nick (Chaplain) on Jul 16, 2001 at 08:08 UTC
    I've hesitated posting here since I've recently made an ass of myself, but here 'ya go ...

    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, but I wouldn't want the responsibility of having my own code that I post here be available for public consumption as with CPAN.

    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.

    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.

    What we really 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.

    Some of the best code around here are snippets, things like Japhy's response to a post of mine

    sub union { my %seen; @seen{@$_} = () for @_; return keys %seen; } sub intersection { my %seen; for (@_) { $seen{$_}++ for @$_ } return grep $seen{$_} == @_, keys %seen; }

    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.

    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, ahem, Japhy's above-quoted example). Adding the ability to search in ## Comments for text seperately than function name searching would be a really good method, I think.

    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.

    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 look for the answer before receiving it? I've never known Librarian-monks to ask for outside help in cateloging their books :)

    mr.nick ...

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