On Thu, 21 Aug 2003, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> The first solution that sprang into my mind was a "CPAN cookbook" but
> who wants to write that?  Presumably there are better solutions.

It doesn't have to be a book necessarily.  A "CPAN Pilot" in some tiki
with a dedicated group of Perlers would help.  If enough people rate their
favorite modules it would be a good starting indication of what's worth
including and not.  (Not that popularity should be the only consideration,
but it would be a better first pass than nothing.)  I've never taught a
class to experienced Perl folks where I didn't introduce them to a dozen
modules they had never heard of.  I get the daily e-mails from use.perl
announcing new modules and I had heard of only one of the modules folks
just mentioned in relation to this deferred variable definition stuff.  

Part of that is that I've never needed something like it, but a big part
of it is because there's no good guide.  And if people that program Perl
everyday can't keep track, how can we expect newbs to?  Just look at all
the nasty Perl that makes it out there as CGI scripts (to this day).  It
makes Matt's scripts look well written in some cases.  awstats is a good
example of this sadly and my most recent.  It's pure Perl, yay.  It's easy
to install and use.  There are lots of features.  It's flexible and
intelligent.  It gets updated on sourceforge quite often.  But have you
seen the code?  I thought about adding in the ability for it to pull stats
from a database and after priting out hundreds of pages of very C-like
awstats.pl code I decided it was way too much trouble in the short term.

Here's a related thought for making active Perlers lives easier.  Ages ago
O'Reilly put out the four volume boxed set with the bulk of the volumes
being various module pods in two thick tomes.  And A good portion of my
printer's life has gone to printing out newer pods to carry with me to
read.  Most of these get recycled ultimately because of being out of date
or they get buried in a project file that I never open again.  If there
were a way for people to make their own module reference book and keep it
up to date, indexed, and such it would be a Good Thing right?  Having this 
stuff print right and be manageable is very helpful even for those of who 
aren't afraid to read books on the screen.

So, I think there are a variety of better solutions.  We just need some 
volunteers!

-- 
</chris>

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It
will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
-Robert Maynard Hutchins, educator (1899-1977)


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