Michael Lazzaro wrote:
One reason is that much of the strength of Perl is in the modules. Trying to find out which if any modules are the wheel that I am about to reinvent can be difficult. Often, you end up with several competing modules, and then need to make a decision about which to use.On Friday, November 8, 2002, at 11:07 AM, Richard Nuttall wrote:I presonally use a combination of documentation for programming, and find the Perl documentation more difficult to use than many.That's an interesting observation -- I'd love to hear more thoughts on that. Is it simply that, as you said further down, they are not adequately cross-sliced, or are there other problems? Do you think the current documentation is one of the reasons many people find Perl so opaque, or is it simply the nature of the language?
Since Perl6 will allow almost infinite extension of the language, this will become more of an issue.
Since I don't (any more) write Perl all day, every day, just need to write a few hundred line script on a regular basis, I find it takes as much time to find out which modules will do most of what I need as it does to write the script.
When you are embedded in the language all the time, of course you don't need the documentation since you are breathing it, but for me the power of Perl is that it is completely deterministic for writing moderate length scripts :
1. Rough out (in head) functionality required.
2. Look for modules that give some support. (assuming I need a module I haven't used before)
3. Copy my favourite template script with :
use warnings;
use DBI;
use Getopt::Long;
use Data::Dumper;
use LWP::Simple;
4. Copy example from module pod documentation.
5. Write and test code.
I can fairly much guarantee that most scripts I need to write can be done in a couple of hours, tops,
will work at the end of that time and will be easy to update/modify.
Things (documentation) that would help that be more efficient :
1. Libraries of code samples with cross referencing (e.g. Perlmonks.org has code stuff, but not sure
enough of finding what I need.)
2. More structured & documented module mechanism. (Where does Perl6 end and modules begin ?)
3. Faster, more certain function/capabilility search. ("How do I ....")
R.
