Tim Bray, that XML co-inventor, has an
article and photos of Perl Whirl 2000 posted on oreillynet.com. It
is an interesting mix of information about cruising and Perl.
Heh
pudge on 2000-06-08T21:54:43
He gives this code as "new" to Perl 5.6:
open($fh, "<foo");
$l = readline($fh); # like <>
&mySub($fh);
Of course, this has worked for a long time in Perl. What is new to Perl is that you can do:
open(my $fh, "<foo");
That is, filehandles are autovivified, whereas before you needed to do:
my $fh = gensym(); # or something
Also, I think item #22 on his list was, well, interesting.
And if XML::Parser is as slow as he says, I want it sped up, too.
All in all, it was interesting to read an "outsider's" perspective of the whole thing.
Item #22
chip on 2000-06-08T22:01:05
Understated. Kind, even. There's a lot more bad than good lately. I hope that'll change.
Re:Item #22
pudge on 2000-06-08T22:23:59
You think there is a lot more bad than good? Well, do you leave out the neutral? Because I've not seen much bad on p5p in awhile.
Re:Item #22
chip on 2000-06-08T22:28:32
The bad has driven out the good, leaving not much of anything. I've been lurking in p5p recently, and I don't even recognize the place. It's a ghost list.
I think I had the right idea with perl-friends; I just wasn't thinking big enough.
Re:Item #22
jzawodn on 2000-06-09T06:14:41
Indeed. I used to learn quite a bit about Perl by reading p5p. Now I see bits of stuff in p5p, but the more interesting discussions are on perl-friends. Perhaps this just all needs time to settle out.
Re:Item #22
pudge on 2000-06-09T10:49:18
I think I had the right idea with perl-friends; I just wasn't thinking big enough.
So what is "big enough"? use Perl? Something else?
Re:perl-friends list charter and subscription info
wickline on 2000-06-09T14:19:26
anyone got a URL?
Re:Item #22
chip on 2000-06-09T15:34:17
Perl-friends is one little room in a big house. I think it's time to start thinking about remodeling the house.
"Big enough" would be a movement for the whole Perl community away from abuse and toward kindness, or at least mildness. It would stop accepting abuse from people just because they happen to be technically proficient.
Meritocracy is fine, as long as "merit" isn't a one-dimensional measurement.
Re:perl-friends list charter and subscription info
chip on 2000-06-09T15:35:31
No URL, just an address. Send a message containing the command "subscribe perl-friends" to
<sympa@perlsupport.com>. The charter is, basically, ``p5p without the abuse''.
Re:Item #22
pudge on 2000-06-09T18:13:47
Well, what can we do to foster it? Can we use use Perl to help foster it? Is there anything we can do differently here that we aren't doing now?
Re:Item #22
chip on 2000-06-09T22:45:43
I think use Perl is already helping in two ways: It's moderated, and there are no anonymous cowards. But moderation is no substitute for control.
I'd like to see the "Important Stuff" policy adjusted thusly:
- Offtopic, Inappropriate, or Illegal comments might be moderated down. [explanation of how moderation works]
- Do not verbally abuse anyone. Abusive comments will be deleted and may result in cancellation of your posting privileges.
A little description of what constitutes verbal abuse would be helpful, of course. But it's reasonable to decide that abuse won't be tolerated, even if the precise definition isn't yet nailed down.
We already have standards
jjohn on 2000-06-11T02:04:24
Perl works basically the same on all the platforms I've used. Therefore, setting the official standard in stone is nearly a no-brainer for most things (how do strings promote to numbers, ints to floats, etc). If standardization nets on big corporate user, the whole community benefits.
On the .exe issue I wish instead of compiling perl to a stand-alone executable that we could easily install the whole perl distribution on the target PC. Why? Why not. Perl is not nearly so bloated as other *cough*microsoft*cough* products.
Installing the whole thing once might be nice. Specially if the install prog can detect an existing perl install (and then not install a new copy). Anyone can modify an executable. Ask old skool M$DOG virus hackers. Scripts allow the end user the freedom to fix what the original coder couldn't forsee for a given install.
So, standards good (cos we have them already) and "stand-alone" .exe's bad (they buy you nothing).
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Re:We already have standards
pudge on 2000-06-11T15:39:16
jj, I agree, but I am not prepared to argue with people who say that some agency or bank policy requires "binary" executables.
LWP
jns on 2000-06-12T10:26:31
LWP is the best-known Perl module for talking to the Web. It has grievous problems in the areas of time-outs and input throttling, and furthermore it's big and very hard to understand.
Is it so very hard to understand ? I have no problems with it and would consider myself far from being a wizard.
Anyhow why is Larry Wall wearing a shirt that looks like he yacked up a Vienetta down his front ;-}
/J\
Re:LWP
pudge on 2000-06-12T12:42:59
Is [LWP] so very hard to understand ? I have no problems with it and would consider myself far from being a wizard.
Well, it DOES require its own cookbook manpage. :-)
Re:Item #22
rebecca on 2000-06-12T17:49:44
I've been reading p5p (via the archives) for
years and, while I see your point, I'm not sure
I totally agree. Indeed it is sad that
nearly all of the past pumpkings have left the
list, but most of them were volunteers and it's
very hard to volunteer for year after year after year. While I agree a more polite list would probably have held some of them a bit longer, I wonder whether it could really make a big difference in the long run.
On the positive side, I think Sarathy's in a better position, since it's really part of his job to maintain perl, so I hope he doesn't burn out as quickly.
Re:Item #22
chip on 2000-06-13T00:59:14
Rebecca, thanks for your analysis. It's possible I'm overplaying this issue. But I think that the damage we can see is not even the major portion of the price we've really paid.
Just think of the opportunity cost of fighting: all that time and energy spent flaming that could have been used productively.
And, worse: Once we got a reputation for eating our young, how many potentially helpful people just refrained from joining in the first place?
Pumpkings come and go, that's true. But hurt feelings last a long, long time. Best to avoid them in the first place, rather than having to clean up the mess time after time.
Re:LWP is elegant
chip on 2000-06-13T01:05:44
... and elegance often trades against ease of learning. An elegant system doesn't have short cuts; each part is segregated by a category system that may be quite refined, but which must be learned.
It's an excellent example of Perl OO, BTW; it's what I point to when people ask for examples.
Re:LWP is elegant
jns on 2000-06-14T08:57:38
It's an excellent example of Perl OO, BTW; it's what I point to when people ask for examples
Indeed it is, it's probably for that reason that people find it a little tricky to get started with LWP::UserAgent. Getting your head round OO just to be able to use the functionality provided by a module is possibly too much for some folk. It might be for this reason that Gisle provided an alternative to the OO interface to HTML::Parser in the most recent version - though I've never had any trouble with that either ;-}
/J\
