On Sat, 4 Oct 2003, John Von Essen wrote:
> From an outsiders perspective....
>
> I agree that learn.perl.org needs some work. It appears to be mainly a
> portal for buying Perl books from Amazon - of which some sort of
> commissions are made. Not to mention that almost every book listed is
> from O'Reilly.
>
These are my thoughts exactly, and I also heard that from other
correspondants who contacted me that this was their impression.
> Does O'Reilly own Perl? Why is it that every perl site so blatantly
> promotes O'Reilly books? I actually think the O'Reilly books are BAD
> for beginners.
>
O'Reilly does not own Perl. But it does employ or contracts many leaders
of the Perl community, and also sponsors perl.com, etc. I don't mind
people promoting O'Reilly books, but they obviously have little to do on
the front page of a beginners' site.
As for their suitability for beginners: I read Programming Perl almost
cover to cover and I can highly recommend it. However, it is not suitable
for beginners at all. I don't know about Learning Perl because I did not
bother reading it.
> The fact is I can go to mysql.org or php.net and effectively learn
> those tools online to a fair degree of proficiency.
>
And likewise for python.org, apache.org, etc. I pointed out this fact at
the "Usability of the Perl World for Beginners" essay, and I still stand
by it. In any case, there is Simon Cozens' "Beginning Perl" book
(available as one PDF per chapter) and there is my "Perl for Perl Newbies"
(available as HTML), and there are other tutorials around, which I was
less impressed with. But they are not properly linked to from
learn.perl.org or much less mirrored there.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
> John
>
> On Saturday, October 4, 2003, at 01:37 PM, Andrew Sweger wrote:
>
> > Hi, Shlomi. We haven't heard from you (in this forum) since April. It
> > doesn't sound like anything has changed since then. What follows is
> > merely
> > my opinion (which carries very little weight in the grand scheme of
> > things).
> >
> > What has not changed most notably is your attitude toward addressing
> > what
> > you see as problems. Most of your email dealt with simply rehashing all
> > the things you see as problems and complaining about being persecuted
> > by
> > the Perl community. This is not an effective means of swaying opinion.
> > You
> > present little new information or encouragement that might draw others
> > in
> > to even look at your work. What I heard (as in, this is the impression
> > left by your message): the material on learn.perl.org sucks (and by
> > extension, those responsible), mine is better, why doesn't anyone
> > listen
> > to me or adopt my material.
> >
> > I understand how frustrated you are. But I also see that you have done
> > a
> > lot of work and are clearly sticking to your guns over a long period of
> > time. I applaud your perseverance and determination to help develop
> > something good for the Perl community. Since your goal (as I see it)
> > is to
> > provide better learning resources for those just beginning to learn
> > Perl,
> > I think the best judge of that material are the beginners. Give us good
> > arguments for why we want to pass along your site to the beginners we
> > know
> > (through user groups, for example). Instead of insulting us, tell us
> > why
> > this is a good thing for beginners.
> >
> > On Sat, 4 Oct 2003, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> >> By contrast, http://perl-begin.berlios.de/ has none of these
> >> deficiencies.
> >> Yet, it is not the big wigs' endorsed site.
> >>
> >> This poor state cannot last too long without having a bad effect on
> >> the
> >> community of newcomers. But how can I do anything about it, without
> >> responsiveness from the beginners-workers?
> >
> > --
> > Andrew B. Sweger -- The great thing about multitasking is that several
> > things can go wrong at once.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
An apple a day will keep a doctor away. Two apples a day will keep two
doctors away.
Falk Fish
