All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Correcting Perl Tutorials Found on the Web

chromatic on 2007-08-14T01:15:07

I just skimmed Herong's Tutorial Notes on Perl - Part A, and it could really use some editorial review. I'm sure there are dozens of other tutorials in the wild that suggest some less than savory practices. Is it worth finding people to make suggestions? (I don't have time.)

I've tried... varying degrees of success

merlyn on 2007-08-14T01:57:04

When I see stuff that is clearly written in 1995 in Perl4-style (cgi-lib.pl, anyone?), it scares me a bit, especially to realize that it has survived over a decade without being corrected or even refreshed a bit. When I can, I try to find some contact address, but a lot of these websites are on autopilot, or perhaps some new guy has inherited some old content and doesn't know where to begin. {sigh}

Re:I've tried... varying degrees of success

chibiryuu on 2007-08-14T03:09:01

I tried leaving a comment with about 12 corrections that I saw immediately on that guy's website, but it's impossible: not only does his comment system have broken whitespace < > handling, it also filters out everything containing URLs and @.

I've given up

brian_d_foy on 2007-08-14T04:28:46

There are too many out there, and the ones that might reply don't really care if the information is correct. Some of them even think they are hard core hackers so they must be right. After all, they think that they can write a tutorial after using Perl for a week.

I'd rather that you keep working on parrot and leave the flood of ignorant information out there as it is and as it will stay despite your efforts. :)

Re:I've given up

Eric Wilhelm on 2007-08-14T08:50:21

I'd rather that you keep working on parrot and leave the flood of ignorant information out there as it is and as it will stay despite your efforts. :)

I'll second that.

It is quite sad though. If someone does want to do something about it, "hall of fame" and "hall of shame" pages on the Perl 5 Wiki might be a good starting point.

Lo! There already is a recommended tutorials page. Now, to just get that linked from learn.perl.org.

Re:I've given up

TeeJay on 2007-08-14T15:24:04

Hall of shame page on the wiki for books, articles, tutorials and debunked myths would be good together with debunkings, corrections, etc.

Re:I've given up

TeeJay on 2007-08-14T15:28:01

hall of shame stub page added to wiki