1st Monasterians

The First Letter of Erudil to the Monasterians
1Erudil, a hacker of Perl, To Vroom, the saints, and all the dwellers of the Monastery: 2Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance. 3It is now a little more than two years since I joined this community of believers in Perl, and my appreciation of this place and its custodians and members continues to grow. 4Brothers and sisters, I beseech you to continue fighting the good fight, showing patience and understanding to those who come to the gates of our blessed Monastery, bereft of clues and ignorant of our ways. 5Do not rebuke them with harsh words such as "RTFM", but rather lead them gently - with URLs - so that they may learn wisdom. 6Suffer the newbies to come unto us, instructing them of the many truths contained within the good book. 7For who among us has never been in a state of error or ignorance? 8Consider carefully the following: 9Blessed are they that "use strict;", for their typos shall be caught before trouble arises. 10Blessed are they that use "-w", for Perl itself shall show them the error of their ways. 11Blessed are they that "use CGI;", for their parameters shall be passed without error. 12Blessed are they that use CPAN, for exceedingly large shall be the number of wheels that they do not re-invent.		13Blessed are they that understand regexs, for they shall waste no time trying to parse HTML. 14Blessed are you, when "they" insult you and ridicule you, and speak all manner of evil against you for using Perl, for great will be your reward when your project is finished in less time, and with less effort. 15If there are those who refuse to accept our wonderful message, do not allow them to draw you into a fruitless flame war, and thereby bring disrepute upon yourselves and our Monastery. 16Remember well: "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?". 17If this is an area of weakness for you, as it is for me, then I would encourage you, my fellow Monasterians, to consider a vow of silence as I have done, speaking rarely and with words carefully chosen to edify and inform.a 18Brothers and sisters, I commend you once again for restoring my faith in the idea of a viable, on-line community. And now, 19May your syntax always be correct and your algorithms efficient. 20May your references point to good data, and may you grow in the knowledge and understanding of our beloved language, Perl. 21Amen and amen.
a 17 Some early manuscripts do not have verse 17

[japhy]

What a shame this wasn't written as Perl poetry. ;) And as a footnote to verse 13, HTML-like structures (that is, if HTML were "perfect") can be parsed (albeit with effort) with regexes. But now it seems like I've started Protestantism or something, so I'll back off from that. ;) That being said, I humbly offer this translation.

substr("Erudil to the Monasterians", 0, 1);

1 . Erudil->isa(PerlHacker)

.. [ "vroom", @saints, @monastery ];

2 . undef $^W, close(STDERR) and !$! for 1..100;

3 . -M Erudil > 2*365 and
$appreciation{$_}++ for
qw( place custodians members );

4 . do { for (@brothers, @sisters)
{ listen up, hearken } continue {
to: wait() and study() for grep
!clue($_) && ignorant($_), Visitors-
To-Our-Blessed-Monastery } };

5 . do { not rebuke($words{harsh} =~ /RTFM/),
but }, lead-with-URLs if wisdom->isa(
goal-of-theirs); 6 . allow for newbies and
instruct(grep $_, @contents); 7. for 0 <
grep errant || ignorant, @us;

8 . consider; these:
9 . ($^H & 0x602) and bless($they),
for typos < troubles;
10 . $^W and bless($they),
for $errors -> (0);
11 . %CGI:: and bless($they),
for eval { pass-parameters }
and not $@;
12 . eval "use CPAN; 1" and bless($they),
for $wheels_not_reinvented > 1e9;

13 . qr// and bless($they),
for HTML-time == 0;
14 . insults? ridicule? blessed:
are: you, for time and
effort < theirs;

15 . grep refuser($_), @those ?
(do { not allow flame wars } or
disrepute): yourselves or Monastery;
16 . study well::, $$ = 0 for
grep cool lost, grep flamewar
winner, @men; time < age-of-reason   
and 17 . those who suffer thus, do {
consider: like me, close mouth,
select words, carefully, to edify,
to inform };

18 . $_++ for @brothers, @sisters, 
restorers-of-faith and $^T = time,

19 . good-syntax and efficient-
algorithms; 20 . eval { $$ref; 1 }
and study, study Perl, study
bless$ed, Perl;

21 . Amen and amen;

_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a (from-home) job
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;

[PhilHibbs]

++ to anyone that can rewrite that in Lingua::Romana::Perligata (although I don't know if it handles regexes yet)

[gmax]

(Later finding in a Perl catacomb)



²² And blessed be the ones who don't make a habit of XP whoring ... :)
for they will have a better chance of getting a date.


 _  _ _  _  
(_|| | |(_|><
 _|   

[ybiC]

⁴⁵ Again, the kingdom is like a merchant looking for fine Perl^a.
⁴⁶ When he found code^a of great value, he went away and sold everything he owned and bought it.

^a scholars disagree on meanings of original greek forms of these words




<sub>Update: minor verbage tweaks for more consistant analogy

    cheers and ++Erudil,
    Don
    striving toward Perl Adept
    (it's pronounced "why-bick")</sub>

[Biker]

I listen and learn once more Erudil, to your vise words. I was very kindly accepted and given indications of good directions when I first came here and I will always remain grateful to my fellow monks.

It is my duty to try to remember your vise words, so that one day when I am vise in programming Perl, I should also be humble when helping others to program Perl and that the little help I can give today shall be constructive.



---

Everything will go worng!

[newrisedesigns]

New users to Perl and to the Monastery really should read this. It's pretty funny, and true to the point, and it reflects what PerlMonks is about.

Maybe as an appendice or a 'long lost scroll' in the "Guide to the Monastery."

John J Reiser
newrisedesigns.com

[McD]

Selah!

++Erudil, crown jewel in the pantheon of PerlMonk saints.

Peace,
-McD

[tjh]

erudil, well done!

This set me thinking about the Monastery, the 'heirarchy' tied (no pun intended - well, maybe not) to the gradients of canonization <initiate .. saint> here at PerlMonks, and led me to the thought of Perl certification. :)

(I know, wars have started over lesser controversies.)

Should there ever be a recognized, respectable source of such certification (a seminary?), should it:

• Certify in gradients based on tested levels of expertise, and call each level by PM's ecclesiastical titles?
• Have the issued certificates presided over by a Bishop with full authority to issue, restest and revoke?
• Have a board responsible for standardizing levels of expertise (the catechism), mandating recertification timing, etc? (college of cardinals?)
• Hmmm. Would we ever end up with our own Knights Templar? lol
• and just maybe, the powers-that-be might get us a better calendar...

What have I missed?

But we need to stay away from that Celibacy concept...

[nefertari]

I like it very much, but shouldn't the greeting in the beginning be:
"Laziness, Impatience and Hubris be yours in abundance."? ;-)

[Joost]

Thank you, for giving me a .sig that makes me think twice before posing :-)

Joost.

[Cyrnus]

And thank you both, Erudil for the passage and Joost for the link.

[LazerRed]

Strange stares of disbelief from co-workers, as I spontaneously spit coffee over my desk as I read:

13) Blessed are they that understand regexs, for they shall waste no time trying to parse HTML.

[weini]

I can't find the right words in english ... so a big "THANK YOU, ERUDIL" has to do it all.
Being a acolyte, may I bring some incense for you ;^)

weini,
who's looking forward reading the second letter (or perhaps a First Letter to the PHPdriants?).

[choeppner]

O scholarly ones

There have been rumors of a set of tablets
Containing the 10 commandments of Perl Programming?

Does anyone know what was written on those tablets?

[disciple]

I wish this were the general conduct of others outside the Perl culture. Then again, if it were too nice, I might never get off the computer. :-)

[Anonymous Monk]

11Blessed are they that "use CGI;", for their parameters shall be passed without error.

Oh the irony!! xD xD xD

[Anonymous Monk]

Oh the irony!! xD xD xD

Always look at the publish date ,

the age of reinventing CGI.pm was alive and well in yonder time