[META] Why I Often Refer People to http://perl-begin.org/ .

Hi all,

I've received quite a lot of heat from people here and elsewhere, due to the
fact that I sometimes referred people to resources on http://perl-begin.org/ ,
in part because it is my own work. In this message, I'd like to note why I
have been linking there and will continue to link there, while taking the fact
that it is my own site into consideration, and that I cannot be accused of
hypocricity for making use of it here ( also see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem ).

Now, the main contender for the Perl Beginners' Site is http://learn.perl.org/
.. Now comparing between the two we get:

1. The licence of most of http://perl-begin.org/ is
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ which allows for almost unlimited
use given attribution (parts of perl-begin are Public Domain , GFDL and
recently we mirrorred the CC-by-nc-sa Modern Perl book by chromatic).

This is while the licence of learn.perl.org is
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ which is the most
restrictive of the Creative Commons licences, and prevents a lot of use.

2. The coverage of http://perl-begin.org/ is much bigger than learn.perl.org.
There are many more tutorials in the tutorials section, and there are many
more pages on http://perl-begin.org/ including for some motivation on *why* to
learn Perl, for resources about what to learn Perl from ( tutorials and books,
including some that are mirrored locally, IDEs and editors, core
documentation, collectionsof articles, FAQs and Exercises ) as well as how to
get help (mailing lists, web forums, IRC channels, wikis and blogs). If that's
not enough, there's also a coverage of platforms where Perl can run on, Common
Uses (including Bio-info, chat bots, databases, email, QA and testing, text
processing, etc.) and Perl topics ( e.g: date and time, debugging, hashes,
references, regular expressions, Object Oriented Perl)

3. We are referring people to the appropriate resources on learn.perl.org
where appropriate.

4. Perl-Begin is maintained in an open Mercurial repository on
http://bitbucket.org/ , which everyone can "fork", "clone" and contribute to.
I accept any input, reports on typos, corrections, even without cloning the
respository etc.

On the other hand, effectively contriubting to learn.perl.org has proven to be
extremely difficult due to hostility and elitism on the part of its
maintainers. In order to contribute to http://perl-begin.org/ all I need to do
is patch the sources in my personal clone of the repository. On the other
hand, just writing a patch to add a tutorials page to learn.perl.org proved to
take several days of active discussion and red tape, and the patch ended up
beign committed to the repository, in a derived state to what I approved, and
without the http://perl-begin.org/ origins and my contributions even
attributed in the Subversion commit message (which is a violation of its CC-by
licence).

5. Perl-Begin has been actively maintained since its inception. On the other
hand, learn.perl.org has been suffering from a lot of neglect and often years
on end passed without activity.

------------------------

If you can think of a good reason why I should refer people to any other site
besides http://perl-begin.org/ (even taking into account that I am its
originator and chief maintainer), then please share it now. Otherwise, I find
http://perl-begin.org/ far superior to all of its competition and as such
would appreciate that people:

1. Won't have any qualms for me recommending it, because I'm acting based on
the Perl world's best interests for recommending it instead of a far inferior
alternative.

2. Will consider recommending it to people they encounter themselves, as well
as linking to it.

It's high time we put the ad-hominem tendency of accusing someone of being
selfish for recommending projects that they contributed to, to rest. There are
many good reasons for prefering http://perl-begin.org/ over learn.perl.org and
I'm not acting selfishly for recommending it, because it actually does rock.

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

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Re: [META] Why I Often Refer People to http://perl-begin.org/ .

Hi,

Please direct any replies to this to me off-list, to save the list
from off topic.

On 19 May 2011 07:53, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> I've received quite a lot of heat from people here and elsewhere

Not from me... whilst I have issues with perl-begin.org: design,
layout, easy of use, tone etc - I applaud your efforts in creating and
maintaining it which is why I have never discussed it with you.
Personally I would like the Perl core documentation and faq updated in
preference to any website (where possible).

I would like to point out the following...

> 1. The licence of most of http://perl-begin.org/ is
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ which allows for almost unlimited
> use given attribution (parts of perl-begin are Public Domain , GFDL and
> recently we mirrorred the CC-by-nc-sa Modern Perl book by chromatic).
>
> This is while the licence of learn.perl.org is
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ which is the most
> restrictive of the Creative Commons licences, and prevents a lot of use.

No one has ever had enough of an issue with this to discuss it with me/us
so this isn't really an issue until that point.

> 4. Perl-Begin is maintained in an open Mercurial repository on
> http://bitbucket.org/ , which everyone can "fork", "clone" and contribute to.

https://github.com/ranguard/learn-perl-org/ (not live yet, doing work on it now)
https://github.com/ranguard/installing-perl/

Because I could not get traction on my original plan for learn.perl.org I
am approaching it from a different angle which I hope will make it easier
for people to help with.

> 5. Perl-Begin has been actively maintained since its inception. On the other
> hand, learn.perl.org has been suffering from a lot of neglect and often years
> on end passed without activity.

Agreed - I kind'a had a lot of other perl sites which needed love first...
https://github.com/ranguard/learn-perl-org/commits/master/ I'm working
on it now!

I don't intend learn.perl.org to become a huge repository of information
(see idea about core perldocs/faq being updated instead). I'm focusing on
the very first steps (installing, tools, where to find more
information) and will see
how it goes from there.

Cheers

Leo

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Re: [META] Why I Often Refer People to http://perl-begin.org/ .

Hi Leo,

On Sunday 22 May 2011 21:39:13 Leo Lapworth wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Please direct any replies to this to me off-list, to save the list
> from off topic.
>

Sorry, but I'm replying to the list, so everyone will know what I think. There
are no secrets in a society. This is not "off-topic" here. Please either reply
to the list, or don't reply to me at all.

> On 19 May 2011 07:53, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > I've received quite a lot of heat from people here and elsewhere
>
> Not from me... whilst I have issues with perl-begin.org: design,
> layout, easy of use, tone etc - I applaud your efforts in creating and
> maintaining it which is why I have never discussed it with you.

I wasn't referring to you as someone who criticised me referring people to
http://perl-begin.org/ .

If you want, you can enumerate your issues with it to me in your reply.

> Personally I would like the Perl core documentation and faq updated in
> preference to any website (where possible).
>

Well, some things are out-of-the-scope for both of them: XML, Web
(Catalyst/etc.), date-and-time, IRC, databases, bio-info, SSH/Telnet, parsing
using RecDescent / Bottom-up parsers, etc. Furthermore, I'm giving much more
choice in http://perl-begin.org/ , in case someone is unhappy from what is
offered from the Perl core docs, which is absent from it. See for example what
happened at:

http://perl-begin.org/topics/references/#perlcafe-chat-log

Finally, I should note that the Perl 5 FAQ is:

1. Split into several sections - which is a big no-no:

http://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html#all-as-archives

2. I may be effectively prevented from contributing to it due to political
reasons.

3. Is written in POD and so is less expressive than XHTML or DocBook 5/XML.

> I would like to point out the following...
>
> > 1. The licence of most of http://perl-begin.org/ is
> > http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ which allows for almost
> > unlimited use given attribution (parts of perl-begin are Public Domain ,
> > GFDL and recently we mirrorred the CC-by-nc-sa Modern Perl book by
> > chromatic).
> >
> > This is while the licence of learn.perl.org is
> > http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ which is the most
> > restrictive of the Creative Commons licences, and prevents a lot of use.
>
> No one has ever had enough of an issue with this to discuss it with me/us
> so this isn't really an issue until that point.
>

Well, I have a lot of issue with the l.p.o licensing. It sucks. Will you
please change it to something like CC-by or CC-by-sa?

Furthermore, I should note that a restrictive licence can manifest itself
simply in inaction. For example, Israel has published some of its defense
photos under an "All rights reserved." licence, and they are afraid to put it
under a CC licence to prevent abuse. And guess what? People are not abusing
it, but they are not asking them for a legitimate use either.

On the other hand, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera has released many
photos and videoclips under CC-by or CC-by-sa and people are sharing and
building them like crazy, making Israel look bad.


> > 4. Perl-Begin is maintained in an open Mercurial repository on
> > http://bitbucket.org/ , which everyone can "fork", "clone" and contribute
> > to.
>
> https://github.com/ranguard/learn-perl-org/ (not live yet, doing work on it
> now) https://github.com/ranguard/installing-perl/
>
> Because I could not get traction on my original plan for learn.perl.org I
> am approaching it from a different angle which I hope will make it easier
> for people to help with.

OK, we were explicitly prohibited from creating a git/hg/etc. repository of
the l.p.o sources, and everything was supposed to be coordinated with the
official svn repository (which required a lot of red tape to get something
there.). Who allowed you to create a github repository for that, and why
wasn't it announced on
http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/perl-org-p atches ?

>
> > 5. Perl-Begin has been actively maintained since its inception. On the
> > other hand, learn.perl.org has been suffering from a lot of neglect and
> > often years on end passed without activity.
>
> Agreed - I kind'a had a lot of other perl sites which needed love first...
> https://github.com/ranguard/learn-perl-org/commits/master/ I'm working
> on it now!

OK, thanks.

>
> I don't intend learn.perl.org to become a huge repository of information
> (see idea about core perldocs/faq being updated instead). I'm focusing on
> the very first steps (installing, tools, where to find more
> information) and will see
> how it goes from there.

Recently, an OOP tutorial covering Moose was rejected from the Perl 5 core,
because Moose is not a core module. How do you expect to get the rest of the
information on http://perl-begin.org/ there?

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

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Basic question on arrays $ vs @

This is a very basic question on arrays and referring to the elements. In
referring to the elements, I know that it is correct practice to use $
instead of @, but I know that Perl allows the @. My simple question is what
is the difference. I have looked at different Perl tutorials, but have not
found one that explains why to use $ over @. Is it just common practice, or
is there a functional reason?
Tim

Quick example:
my @animals = ("dog","cat");
my $arrayCounter = @animals;
for (my $count=0;$count<$arrayCounter;$count++) {
print "Critter is $animals[$count]\n"; # use $animals instead of @animals
}



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Re: Basic question on arrays $ vs @

>>>>> "TL" == Tim Lewis writes:

TL> This is a very basic question on arrays and referring to the
TL> elements. In referring to the elements, I know that it is correct
TL> practice to use $ instead of @, but I know that Perl allows the @.
TL> My simple question is what is the difference. I have looked at
TL> different Perl tutorials, but have not found one that explains why
TL> to use $ over @. Is it just common practice, or is there a
TL> functional reason? Tim

TL> Quick example:
TL> my @animals = ("dog","cat");
TL> my $arrayCounter = @animals;
TL> for (my $count=0;$count<$arrayCounter;$count++) {
TL> print "Critter is $animals[$count]\n"; # use $animals instead of @animals
TL> }

the sigil is supposed to tell you how many elements you are getting from
the array. $animals[0] is obviously one elements. @animals[0,1] is
getting two elements and is called a slice. so @animals[0] is also a
slice and is legal but misleading, it should use a $ for the
sigil. where slices really come into play and can legimaitely get one
element is when the the indexes are in an array. then you need the @
sigil as the index is also in list context (the prefix sigil does
provide the context for inside the []).

@indexes = ( 0 ) ;
print @animals[@indexes] ; # prints 'dog'

note that if you use a $ like this:

print $animals[@indexes] ; # prints 'cat'

it prints cat since @indexes in scalar context is 1 which is the index
used to get cat.

so there is a warning in perl if you use a scalar (single literal value
or scalar var) when indexing an array slice. it means you chose a list
context for indexing but explicitly indexed with one value. yes, it
works and is legal but it is not good coding.

uri

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RE: Basic question on arrays $ vs @

Thanks Uri. That makes perfect sense.

-----Original Message-----
From: Uri Guttman [mailto:uri@StemSystems.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 1:37 PM
To: Tim Lewis
Cc: beginners@perl.org
Subject: Re: Basic question on arrays $ vs @

>>>>> "TL" == Tim Lewis writes:

TL> This is a very basic question on arrays and referring to the
TL> elements. In referring to the elements, I know that it is correct
TL> practice to use $ instead of @, but I know that Perl allows the @.
TL> My simple question is what is the difference. I have looked at
TL> different Perl tutorials, but have not found one that explains why
TL> to use $ over @. Is it just common practice, or is there a
TL> functional reason? Tim

TL> Quick example:
TL> my @animals = ("dog","cat");
TL> my $arrayCounter = @animals;
TL> for (my $count=0;$count<$arrayCounter;$count++) {
TL> print "Critter is $animals[$count]\n"; # use $animals instead of
@animals
TL> }

the sigil is supposed to tell you how many elements you are getting from
the array. $animals[0] is obviously one elements. @animals[0,1] is
getting two elements and is called a slice. so @animals[0] is also a
slice and is legal but misleading, it should use a $ for the
sigil. where slices really come into play and can legimaitely get one
element is when the the indexes are in an array. then you need the @
sigil as the index is also in list context (the prefix sigil does
provide the context for inside the []).

@indexes = ( 0 ) ;
print @animals[@indexes] ; # prints 'dog'

note that if you use a $ like this:

print $animals[@indexes] ; # prints 'cat'

it prints cat since @indexes in scalar context is 1 which is the index
used to get cat.

so there is a warning in perl if you use a scalar (single literal value
or scalar var) when indexing an array slice. it means you chose a list
context for indexing but explicitly indexed with one value. yes, it
works and is legal but it is not good coding.

uri

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Re: Basic question on arrays $ vs @

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 13:15:49 -0400 , Tim Lewis wrote:
> This is a very basic question on arrays and referring to the elements. In
> referring to the elements, I know that it is correct practice to use $
> instead of @, but I know that Perl allows the @. My simple question is what
> is the difference. I have looked at different Perl tutorials, but have not
> found one that explains why to use $ over @. Is it just common practice, or
> is there a functional reason?
> Tim
>
> Quick example:
> my @animals = ("dog","cat");
> my $arrayCounter = @animals;
> for (my $count=0;$count<$arrayCounter;$count++) {
> print "Critter is $animals[$count]\n"; # use $animals instead of @animals
> }

In addition to the guidance Uri gave you, consider the following syntax:

for my $critter (@animals) {
print "Critter is $critter\n";
}

This way you don't need to keep track of how many items you have. It's
less code to read, less code to write, and fewer places for failure all
around. Also, to be sure, the only difference between for and foreach is
expressly and specifically four characters: 'each'. They are otherwise
completely equivalent.

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