Part of the problem is that with perl, I would guestimate that somewhere between 70-90% of it's use is for CGI scripting, which means that 70-90% of the questions and related discussion is about "how do I access a DB?" "how do I do secure transactions?" etc. These topics tend to either be answered (correctly) by RTFM or a discussion on how to do them; code really doesn't help. Certainly there's nothing wrong is us answering these questions (and attempting to reduce their numbers by helping newbies to RTFM first), but these don't lead us to improving knowledge for the more advanced monks.

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.

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

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