Re^2: Five Common Misconceptions While Learning Perl

[m.att]

Despite the fact that you indicated that you wrote this 'inflamatory rhetoric' to illustrate a point rather than to be taken literally, I'd like to respond to it:

> Did you google on PERL and tutorial or did you draw from
Yes, I did.
> hyperbole or imagination? Did you intentionally mislead us,
Yes, I drew both from hyperbole and imagination, and no I didn't intentionally mislead you.
> lie to us, dupe us or was it just ineptitude?
or lie to you or dupe you. Yes, my attempt at using 2nd person narrative to describe the activities of fictional users was probably driven by my ineptitude at expressing myself in prose.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with your post. By your own admission, 57% of the tutorials you've found on Google are one of (or all) outdated, 'lame', or requires the reader to be sensible. This supports my comment that 'Certainly the majority of tutorials will mislead you, lie to you, teach you broken concepts, and basically waste your time'. Note that I didn't say 'all tutorials will mislead you, lie to you, or teach you broken concepts', just the majority.

I don't believe that when a beginner approaches a new language (especially if they have no prior programming experience) that they should be expected to be sensible about what learning material they choose or have some innate ability to guide themselves to well-written learning material. I also don't believe that if you present an outright beginner with 7 choices of material to learn a new concept from that they will somehow instinctively choose the best material. That's why I think it's a good idea to guide people to the best possible material at the outset and allow the beginner to focus on learning rather than disseminating the good from the bad.

As a clarification, all of the 2nd person narratives at the beginning of the misconceptions are fictional and straight from my imagination. They may not hold up under intense scrutiny, nor are they meant to. They are meant as an entertaining read to describe what a random, fictional beginner possibly encountered. They aren't based on my own experiences, but are rather drawn from my imagination and from the actual experiences of literally hundreds of people I've found to have been mislead during their learning process. I apologize if this is unclear, but I guess you'll have to chalk it up to my less than adequate ability to express myself in written English language. Alluding to an ulterior motive to mislead or lie to people is uncalled for. (The previous statement is in response to 'When I found that google search rather different than you implied, I distrust your whole post.' rather than to the admitted 'inflamatory rhetoric' to 'mirror my own')

Thanks
m.att

[rir]

M.att, the key point of my reply was what you replied with: Alluding to an ulterior motive to mislead or lie to people is uncalled for. That is what you did, or you were more direct.

I don't and didn't subscribe any ulterior motives to you. I did not mean to allude to such either, I only meant what I said I ... found that ... search ... different than you implied, I distrust your whole post. No allusion to motives intended: I find an error and so I doubt the accuracy of the rest of your post.

That you feel so attacked demonstrates my point. You smeared a bunch of people who, just like you, went to some effort to share their knowledge. You impugned their competency, motives and honesty. When I only ask if you are doing the same you are offended.

My lame does not equate to your utterly horrible and I do not agree that my examples support your point. I am not offended that someone codes to a standard I dislike: &routine is perfectly good perl. (Most Monks realize that &name cannot be routinely applied to builtins. The student who learns that convention early on also learns early to distinguish builtins from package subs.)

I found your first post to be entertaining, you succeeded in that. I generally agree with your post.

Beginners have misconceptions¹ because they are beginners. What is good teaching material is difficult to determine without access to the student. Even the student who likes and wants to learn will coast, or stop learning, at some point. The student who learns just to accomplish some specific aim will do this at the earliest possible time. This suspension of learning can leave gaping holes for a long time. The sites I called lame may very well serve someone who just wants to achieve some aim. That they don't want to learn Perl, but just want to do XXX, does not make them less worthy of being taught. You, and I, will want to teach them Perl--someone else may be able to teach just what they want to know. The people who were so served, if any, will not be likely to come to your attention, they moved on.

Be well,
rir

¹ -- there are also voids of conception ~

[Anonymous Monk]

"That you feel so attacked demonstrates my point."

Hi! Just in case you failed to notice. The OP has a very high score and your reply has a very negative score. This demonstrates the lack of value others received from your post.

Oh. By the way. You found something that your opinion deemed to be an error. No one agreed with you that it was an actual error. So what you did is you disregarded this otherwise highly rated post because of your opinion, without even verifying that your opinion was truth.

You provided no additional value to this subject and instead used this as an opportunity to espouse your own dogma, which completely missed the point of this highly rated post: that people have misconceptions, not that they are unworthy of being taught.