skill sharpening

[petesmiley]

Don't know if something like this has been posted already. If it has, can someone please point me to the node? Or, at the very least, refine the idea a little. I'm pretty sure it can go far with a little creative work.

You ever write a piece of code that you just know could be written better but you're not sure how? Wouldn't it be great to just drop it in a place where someone else can show you?

Snippets and Seekers of Perl Wisdom don't seem like the right place for it. I always get the feeling that polished code should go in Snippets and broken stuff and opinion questions should go in Seekers of Perl Wisdom.

A place like this would be good for newbies, and good for the experienced folk. The newbies could see other possibilities and the experienced folk would have open opportunities to sharpen their claws.

A plus would be that since it has its own place, everyone would have the same expectations. Of course you could always just change the description of Snippets or Seekers of Perl Wisdom a little as well. Maybe it's a just a habit some of the monks need to get into ;-)

[Tuna]

I think that Seekers of Perl Wisdom would be the place for things like that. I'm not sure that I've ever asked outright for assistance polishing up code (Lord knows it could use it!), but I can't count the number of times that I have posted a problem, along with some code, and people have responded with solutions, as well as "....BTW, the subroutine following that could be better written as...". It might be wise, rather than ask, "how can this program be written better?", to ask a more specific question regarding a portion of code.

One thing that has helped me, and continues to help me, is reading posts which contain similar logic, or attempt to solve similar problems, but are syntactically cleaner/more efficient.

[footpad]

Personally, my experience matches Tuna's. Seekers of Perl Wisdom is, imho, the best place to post--especially if you're not sure about your approach, algorithms, or understanding.

That said, *some* monks are able to express certain challenges as "golfs" and tend to post these as Meditations. I suppose the difference is purely arbitrary. However, I've noticed that SOPW is a fairly safe place to post if you're unsure.

To my mind, snippets should be clever--short--bits that solve a given problem regardless of context. Perhaps not enough to be Cool, but more than a simple Q&A. Polished code, otoh, should be Craft or Cool. YMMV.

--f

[grinder]

As things stand I find the Craft section rather useless because of the user interface. All you get is one large code blob. The Code Catacombs are much nicer because you get to post both code and textual commentary. Someone mentioned this a while ago, but I can't find the reference (and I don't want to beat up on Super Search too much).

In the commentary you can wax lyrical about how the code came about as well as any other useful tidbits that may improve the chance of being hit by a search and/or the chance that someone will understand what the code can do without have to read it in detail. And then of course you don't necessarily want or need all that verbiage in the code itself when it comes to downloading it.

There seems to some some level of redundancy or overlap between the two sections, so in light of the way you get to present your stuff, the catacombs definitely has my favour.


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