Maybe we just need to accept the fact that a lot of monks don't want to stare at huge chunks of unintentionally obfuscated code when they visit, and try to find an approach to the subject of learning Perl that is more palatable to fatigued perlers looking for a break from work.

I was thinking about my Perl studies yesterday, and trying to think of something that I could do at least once a day to learn some new and interesting Perl concept. While I pondered, I remembered fondly my old copy of The C Puzzle Book and wished there were a similar volume of Perl puzzlers available. Perhaps a Perlmonks "Perl Puzzlers" or "Perl Quizzes" section with short but meaty chunks of Perl code would be a good start? (nysus had a good start on something like this, I think, but I haven't noticed any new posts lately).

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

But as for the rest, I understand and sympathize. While I have found a lot of people in the Perl community who taught me a lot about how Perl works, how the things it interacts with work, how Unix works, etc, I can only point to one who really taught me much about computer science per se.

However what you learn elsewhere applies to Perl. And by taking the energy to translate from Scheme to other languages, you undoubtably will understand the underlying principles better.

As for PerlMonks filling this purpose, I don't know that it really can. The problem in my eyes is that there are too many audiences here. The Monastery is growing by leaps and bounds. It contains a pretty good mix of discussions. Aimed at a pretty broad mix of people. Potentially valuable conversation that doesn't fit the basic format and doesn't hit a broad audience doesn't happen to the extent we might like. Plus, as with most value added suggestions, trying to cover those issues takes a lot of energy.

Now I do have an idea for how we might solve most of these issues and get you your content. Unfortunately the content that is at the top of your reading list might take a while to arrive though. (See an upcoming discussion for details...)

UPDATE
The discussion is at Should PerlMonks have official courses?.

Of course, it's all fine and good for me to propose this as I'd be the one reading and learning. The real burden would fall on those among us who already know that sort of stuff. The question is, do they want it? And do they feel like populating it for our benefit? I face the same challenges at work where, as scary as it is to me, I am considered one of the most technical people in our group. There have been many times where people in the group have yelled that they need info and or help with topics, and, though I agree that it's a great idea, I end up doing all this work for it and then dealing with the complaints and short-comings when these people do not recieve instant enlightenent from my words. Don't get me wrong, I love sharing my knowledge. But when you're not a teacher by trade, one can only spend so much time teaching and not on the trade which made you a teacher in the first place.

Two side of the coin. Y'all can flip at will =)

"A man's maturity -- consists in having found again the
seriousness one had as a child, at play."   --Nietzsche
[download]

I'm knee deep in the water, it feels great, and I want to go scuba diving.

Part of seeing more of the ocean is to accept that you have to wear different equipment in different areas. The stuff that feels free and easy when diving in Florida will kill you when you fix oil rigs.

Less pictorial: I don't think Perl can teach you all about programming. No programming language can do this. It is neither reasonable to expect this of Perl, nor of this community.

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com

ObfCode is a potental way to learn for intermediate to advanced monks, but this is more for tricks with perl rather than improving programming style.

So you're looking at more like the article contents at perl.com for advanced users. Here, we sorta have that between the Tutorials and Reviews sections, though neither is a full substitute for that. What I suggest is similar to what some print jounrals do for programmers: a month in advance (or more) a topic is selected, and numerous articles are sent in to cover that topic, with an editor selecting the best ones. Translating it to something here, I would add a new section "articles", with general topics (eg "network sockets programming", "threaded processes") offered up for suggestion, and any monk wishing to write an article may do so. The topic suggestions should be limited to only higher level monks (6th or above?) to avoid having topic pollution ala Q&A/SoPW duplication. "Articles" can be as fundamental as a tutorial, or robust as pure example code with commenting, but it ought to end up being a combination of prose and code so that a message on how to improve ones programming is taught. Which means the message shouldn't be spoonfeed, but nor should it be so vague as "simply read the POD for everything you need". These articles could go on to include psuedo-lessons: after reading the article, the reader could be challenged to modify the code to add new functionality and the like.

(From a PM programming standpoint, there's a few things that would have to be done, but nothing too drastic that I can think of).

Having such a feature would help distinguish PM from USENET or other web forums, which end up being more Q&A instead of learning tools.

I would guestimate that somewhere between 70-90% of it's use is for CGI scripting,

Most of us that have to make a living providing support services to the Perl community at large put that more down at the 40% mark.

It just seems higher because CGI is much more complex than it first appears, and is usually undertaken by people who are light-duty or non- programmers, and therefore show up more in forums trying to get help.

But many people I know have been hacking Perl heavily for years and have never even put up their first CGI program.

Of course, "how do I access a DB?" is a question that is valid whether or not you're in a CGI space, so maybe you've miscategorized some questions. {shrug}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

I'll take your word on it with the years of experience that you've had in perl'ing. But I think the statement that I was trying to make, that most of the questions that we are asked in SoPW/Q&A, are "uninteresting" or "unchallenging" as they seem to represent uses of perl that a majority of perl programmers are involved, and thus already should have a good base of knowledge to go on (eg FAQs, USENET, PM archives). Looking at the current front page of SoPW, there's only 1 out of 10 questions that I would consider to be 'challenging' to find the answer for, in that I would expect to learn something new when helping this user out; the rest I can answer with basic knowledge.

And that is the atrophy that the original thread here to aiming at; there's too many 'uninteresting' yet still useful questions being asked that doesn't help those on the high end of the XP scale. I have no problem answering the uninteresting questions, as long as I have the oppurtunity to learn from others on more advanced questions, and while I still find that this is happening for me, I can see how others a bit more advanced in perl would find the lack of new knowledge deterimental to the PM experience. Which is why I think having Articles aimed beyond the beginning user would be a perfect addition to beat the PM atrophy.

---

Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain

Translating it to something here, I would add a new section "articles", with general topics (eg "network sockets programming", "threaded processes") offered up for suggestion, and any monk wishing to write an article may do so. The topic suggestions should be limited to only higher level monks (6th or above?) to avoid having topic pollution ala Q&A/SoPW duplication. "Articles" can be as fundamental as a tutorial, or robust as pure example code with commenting, but it ought to end up being a combination of prose and code so that a message on how to improve ones programming is taught. Which means the message shouldn't be spoonfeed, but nor should it be so vague as "simply read the POD for everything you need".

I really like this idea. Additionally, I like converter's idea of a Perl Puzzlers book. On dalnet #perl, we have a wonderful user (who I do not think frequents this site) named PerlCure. He does something I have yet to see anywhere else: He makes quizzes for the above-average-but-not-stellar perlmongers present. For example:

<purl> quiz ?
[ sound of cheers from #perl crowd ]
<purl> quiz -->
<purl> BEGIN{ local $@; my $f = 0; 2/$f } print "Done"
<purl> bug or feature ?
[download]

(original credit for the quiz apparently goes to bline)

This sort of thing is interesting, but we could also, like Masem pointed out, have actual articles attached to this. I get something akin to this on the fun-with-perl list at least twice a week. We get golf, but we also get very interesting and informative questions such as:

I hope abigail doesnt mind the repost...

Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 20:40:16 +0200
From: abigail@foad.org
To: fwp@technofile.org
Subject: [FWP] So, you think you know Perl?

Your exercise for today:

   1) Predict what
          echo "" | perl -ple 'print q'
      does.

   2) Run the above command and compare it with your prediction.

   3) Explain any differences.


Abigail
[download]

Folks, these are the kinds of things that get me excited about perl, and make me interested in a new function I dont use or underuse, or use in a different way. I get a ton of innovation out of just little things like that. But we dont really see these too often on PM except for in ob-fu. Which is fun... but useless in terms of my really growing as a programmer. Well, almost useless.

Masem is right. Articles are a great idea. I dont think I'm qualified to make an article, though I'm happy to try. Perhaps we could have a Quest first to see what articles are wanted, and then, as Masem suggested, have articles submitted. Gee, that almost makes us a periodical. (This particular reason is why I subscribed to <sniff> TPJ)

One other note here, tilly suggested I go have a look at Dominus' website, which is excellent. I suggest that for anyone interested in learning more about perl.

I am still very interested in seeing what people have to say about this thread, and I'm glad to see what people have had to say thus far. I think the response is mostly uniform. People would like to see more intermediate-upper level content, as a lot of us have moved past the beginning and even intermediate levels of perl programming and are looking to transcend just hackerdom.

yours as always,
brother dep.

--
Laziness, Impatience, Hubris, and Generosity.

I dont think I'm qualified to make an article, though I'm happy to try.

I would think that anyone on PM that considers themselves to be a non-perl-newbie (say, over level 4), has the ability to write a good article. You may not have the stuff to write something as easily readible as merlyn or chromatic or our other published monks, but you probably know something they don't, and that's what my Articles idea is all about. And if the first time you write something, the article doesn't jive well, just simply use any comments you get on it to improve the next one that you write; given that PM is a friendly community, you should not have to fear rejection or humiliation for writing a poor article. And writing such articles could only improve your own writing skills for your career.

Mind you, we don't need Articles to be come Ms. Slorovski's 3rd grade English class, but I'm sure that this will not happen...

---

Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain

You want to see more code but you're getting distracted by all the non-code posts?

Maybe attaching keywords to nodes, and having an option to filter by keywords would help? I mean the sections make a good breakdown (cf craft) but keywords would make it easier to search newest nodes etc. I don't know how much work this would involve, however, or how many times it has been proposed already :-)