Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
Syntactic Confectionery Delight
 
PerlMonks  

Re^6: Perl Code Changes Behavior if Two Subroutine definitions are swapped

by Cow1337killr (Monk)
on Aug 02, 2016 at 09:05 UTC ( [id://1168997]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^5: Perl Code Changes Behavior if Two Subroutine definitions are swapped
in thread Perl Code Changes Behavior if Two Subroutine definitions are swapped

Thank you, Your Mother, for your informative reply. Not a day goes by where I do not learn something new from you and your fellow Perl Monks.

I had not even thought about reviews. I looked at http://search.cpan.org/~chorny/Switch-2.17/Switch.pm, but I don't know how to find reviews on that webpage. I surfed over to https://metacpan.org/pod/Switch; I can see the hyperlink for reviews there. I read them and did not find anything particularly damaging; one review concerned Switch (2.16) and the previous one concerned Switch (2.10). My point is that no one in the Perl community has taken the time to write a (negative) review about Switch (2.17) that was released on March 18, 2014; the points made in this thread were much more valuable.

Additionally, we are advised in the documentation: "...do not use if you can use given/when". If I wasn't a Perl Monks website frequenter, I probably would not be aware that given and when are experimental keywords, which is another way of saying don't go building systems around these keywords, because one fine day, the wonderful people that bring us Perl will tell us that the experiment is over and it was (very likely) a failure.

So, in summary, you know this stuff and I know this stuff, but for the casual Perl user, it comes under the unfortunate heading of learning curve, which, as we all know, goes straight up.

I don't have to tell you that somehow, someway, we have to attract new blood into our Perl community. (I know that Real Soon Now robots will be writing the code, but that isn't happening fast enough.) So, if there is someone out there that could devote some neurons to a project, even a small one, even an experimental one, even one in the Acme:: top-level namespace, that could keep beginning and intermediate Perl programmers from pursuing dead ends (like the one described in this thread), it would be one more item that Perl could include in the pro column of the list of pros and cons.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^7: Perl Code Changes Behavior if Two Subroutine definitions are swapped
by hippo (Bishop) on Aug 02, 2016 at 09:55 UTC
    So, if there is someone out there that could ...

    Here are some things which you or indeed anyone else could do:

    • Review Switch and detail its shortcomings and suggest better alternatives. Report back here and link to the review and it should get a good number of ++helpful votes.
    • Add your sentiments to Bug 86969
    • Fork the repo, improve the documentation to how you think it should be and submit a PR.
    • Lobby the dist maintainer to set the x_deprecated flag

    The Perl community is just that - a community. If your cause is worthy (and I think it is) then you should be able to either devote your own time to it or convince others to devote theirs.

      Thank you, hippo, for your step by step recipe regarding how to best inform the Perl community that a module is deprecated.

      I have begun to put together my thoughts regarding a review of the Switch module, including numerous links, most of which will come from the Perl Monks website.

      (I was not aware that this was originally a Damian Conway module that programmers shouldn't use in production, because its purpose is to explore and prototype future core language features, as explained at Categorized Damian Modules.)

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://1168997]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others surveying the Monastery: (7)
As of 2024-04-19 13:03 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found