Re: taxonomy for data-structure modules?
On 5/26/07, Ken Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think that's part of it. But another problem is that many people don't know the official names for the data structures they're thinking of, e.g. trie or skiplist or whatever, so they can't search very effectively for it. It does seem like a user-applied keyword tagging scheme on CPAN (e.g. search.cpan.org) would be very fruitful and would go a long way toward solving a lot of the organization-related problems people bring up on this list. -Ken Does perlmonks have a wiki with a data structures section? Wikipedia has loads of data structures documents on it -- for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiplist has links to SkipDB and an implementation in C#. Creating a norm of linking data structure modules from the wikipedia article on the structure in question would do the trick using existing infrastructure, as would other proposals that do not demand tiers of new services appear from nowhere.
Re: taxonomy for data-structure modules?
On May 23, 2007, at 4:15 PM, Eric Wilhelm wrote: Would a sort of taggable search scheme and/or collaborative categorization help? That is, implements functionality modules (e.g. Net::FTP, LWP::UserAgent) seem easier to find and navigate than data structure modules. Maybe that has something to do with the subtle differences in data structures and the number of possible names for any given structure/variation? I think that's part of it. But another problem is that many people don't know the official names for the data structures they're thinking of, e.g. trie or skiplist or whatever, so they can't search very effectively for it. It does seem like a user-applied keyword tagging scheme on CPAN (e.g. search.cpan.org) would be very fruitful and would go a long way toward solving a lot of the organization-related problems people bring up on this list. -Ken
taxonomy for data-structure modules?
That hour of searching-and-not-finding got me to thinking... Is it just me, or is the collection of data-structure modules on CPAN somewhat difficult to discover/navigate? Maybe the frustration is just exaggerated by the fact that it takes just as long to not-find a module for a simple data structure as it takes to not-find a module for some big chunk of functionality? You do the legwork, find nothing, look at the clock and think I could have written this and uploaded it by now. This is of course slightly optimistic or even false economy because we all know the burden of testing and maintenance (and yetanotheritis.) But being empty-handed after an hour of searching and reading will always feel less rewarding than having created something. This then contributes to even more yetanotheritis as we continually search through and read more not-quite-it modules. Would a sort of taggable search scheme and/or collaborative categorization help? That is, implements functionality modules (e.g. Net::FTP, LWP::UserAgent) seem easier to find and navigate than data structure modules. Maybe that has something to do with the subtle differences in data structures and the number of possible names for any given structure/variation? Or, is this just yet-another-variation on searching 45k+ modules is hard? --Eric -- Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value. --Murphy's Constant --- http://scratchcomputing.com ---
