Interesting reaction

phillup on 2004-08-13T17:52:02

I'm a lurker.

There, I've said it.

I watch, I listen (or read, as the case may be) and, on the really good days... I learn.

I read a post by Randall and went to have a look for myself.

I'm not sure what it will look like later, hopefully it will change. But, right now there are big black boxes where all of the code is.

You can, of course, hilite the code with your cursor and read every thing.

But, this reaction... the blocking out of the code, is really disturbing to me for several reasons.

• The nature of "open source" is that code be available. Technically, it still is. But, an effort has been conciously made to make this code less so. I'm not sure what bothers me more... that it was done in the first place, or done so inneffectively. (After reading the node again, it seems that the individuals are blacking out their own code, if they wish. That isn't *quite* as disturbing...)
• It is a community site. The nature of the community is one of the things I like about Perl. It isn't just a language. That nature, for the most part is one of openness and sharing. Yet, this doesn't seem to be very open like.

I've read in Perl Medic that to reach the highest level you will need to take part in "Perl obfuscation"... I sincerely hope this doesn't qualify.

---

you like spoilers?

slanning on 2004-08-13T18:03:08

The point of the boxes is so as not give away the answer, which would be a spoiler.

Re:you like spoilers?

phillup on 2004-08-13T18:13:05

Well... that makes sense!

Thanks for the explanation, because I wasn't getting it.

I only pop over there a couple of times a week, and I haven't seen that before.

I haven't even figured out how to pull up "archives" for the times when I haven't visited in a while and want to "catch up"... so, I'm sure it has happened since I started reading the site... but I haven't seen it.

(Of course, after writing that... I notice a link for "newest nodes".)