Re: Writing answers for newbie questions

[Abigail]

I am aware of the quote in the third Camel. However, said quote only mentions the existance of Baby Perl. It doesn't define what Baby Perl is. In fact, it strongly suggests everyone has his/her own Baby Perl.

And that's just fine. However, in no way this quote implies one should be expected to be addressed in Baby Perl. There isn't a single book written in Baby Perl. No manual page in the Perl distribution talks in Baby Perl. Yet many books are aimed at beginners, and so are tutorials in the main distribution.

Here's an experiment. Get married. Get twins. Call them Angela and Bobby. Separate them. Expose Bobby only to language at his own level. "Dadadadadada" when he's a baby, and one syllable, one word sentences when he's a toddler. Only use words he already knows. To Angela on the other hand, you only talk normally. Normal sentences, with verbs, subjects and objects. On each birthday, compare their linguistic development. Describe the differences. Motive your answer.

And even if you remain convinced you should talk Baby Perl to people asking questions, you still have a practical problem. You will not know what they know. Will you not use a substitution in an answer because you think they don't know substitutions? What about hashes? grep? strict? -w? Perhaps they don't know open has a useful return value. Should you ignore the return value in your answer? Not use CGI.pm? Not use pack? Not use substr?

-- Abigail