P
pfancy
Are the any other perl groups who will actually help out people who are NEW
to perl.
to perl.
U
Uri Guttman
p> Are the any other perl groups who will actually help out people who
p> are NEW to perl.
why don't you ask those groups if there are any?
kind of odd to ask this group for help while you insult them.
and there are plenty of resources to help you learn perl. hmm, perl
comes with plenty of docs and many of them are actually tutorials. there
are at least 2 or more books published about perl. maybe that number is
a trifle low.
what about all those great free scripts you can steal^Wborrow^Wlearn
from? millions of script kiddies who claim to know perl learned that
way!
ever heard of something called school or training?
i just heard of this neat thing called the interweb. maybe it could help
you?
is that helpful enough?
uri
p> are NEW to perl.
why don't you ask those groups if there are any?
kind of odd to ask this group for help while you insult them.
and there are plenty of resources to help you learn perl. hmm, perl
comes with plenty of docs and many of them are actually tutorials. there
are at least 2 or more books published about perl. maybe that number is
a trifle low.
what about all those great free scripts you can steal^Wborrow^Wlearn
from? millions of script kiddies who claim to know perl learned that
way!
ever heard of something called school or training?
i just heard of this neat thing called the interweb. maybe it could help
you?
is that helpful enough?
uri
T
Tad McClellan
pfancy said:
We do that here in this very newsgroup.
What made you think that we don't?
C
Charlton Wilbur
pfancy> Are the any other perl groups who will actually help out
pfancy> people who are NEW to perl.
This one will. Of course, the help you get will most likely be the
help you *need* rather than the help you *want*. No group is going to
be as helpful to a beginner as sitting down for six to eight weeks and
working your way through a good book. No group is going to be as
helpful to a beginner as sitting down for an hour or two a week with a
good teacher. And no group *at all* is going to help you with "write
a program that does this for me, for free."
If you want this group to be helpful, here's what you do.
* Spend at least twenty minutes looking for the answer to your
question in _Learning Perl_, _Elements of Programming with Perl_,
_Programming Perl_, and _The Perl Cookbook_ -- or preferably all
four. If there's an answer there and you ask the question here, all
that will happen here is that you'll be told to RTFM, possibly with
a pointer to the appropriate FM to read. This happens because if
there's already a good explanation of the problem and its solution
somewhere, then it's better to point the querent at that than to
answer it all over again, which takes substantially more time and
effort -- and the help you're getting here is FREE, donated by
VOLUNTEERS.
* Read at least the questions in the Perl FAQ. If your question or
something very similar is there, read the answer. If there's an
answer there and you ask the question here, all that will happen
here is that you'll be told to RTFF, possibly with a pointer to the
appropriate entry to read. This happens for much the same reason:
the FAQ entries are there because many people asked the same
question, and so instead of investing their effort in writing a
hundred different responses, the FAQ authors and maintainers
invested their effort into writing one very good response and
checking it extensively for accuracy.
* If you find the answer somewhere else and don't understand it, by
all means say so, and try to ask specifically about what you don't
understand. This lets people know that (a) you're willing to invest
your own effort and do research on your own, which means you're not
one of the "write my program for me for free!" sorts of posters; and
(b) you'll get responses that aren't just 'RTFM!' because it's clear
that you already have and are asking about something you don't
understand.
* If you've asked a question before and gotten advice, make sure you
are following that advice when you ask your next question. You can
see this trend with Robin: when he first started asking his
questions, people were horrified at the bugs in his code, and
offered advice. Now, several weeks later, he's posting code with
the same bad habits and the same bugs, and the reaction has changed
from horrified but helpful to "shut up and go away, troll who is
unwilling to learn."
* Remember that the people here are volunteers. Many of us are quite
willing to tutor people in Perl, just not for free and not over
Usenet. If you need extensive help and prefer to be walked through
things by a tutor instead of teaching yourself based on a good book,
then you're not going to be very satisfied with the experience
here. Find a local Perl teacher, and pay him or her $30 an hour to
teach you; or take a programming class at your local community
college. Everyone will be happier that way.
Charlton
pfancy> people who are NEW to perl.
This one will. Of course, the help you get will most likely be the
help you *need* rather than the help you *want*. No group is going to
be as helpful to a beginner as sitting down for six to eight weeks and
working your way through a good book. No group is going to be as
helpful to a beginner as sitting down for an hour or two a week with a
good teacher. And no group *at all* is going to help you with "write
a program that does this for me, for free."
If you want this group to be helpful, here's what you do.
* Spend at least twenty minutes looking for the answer to your
question in _Learning Perl_, _Elements of Programming with Perl_,
_Programming Perl_, and _The Perl Cookbook_ -- or preferably all
four. If there's an answer there and you ask the question here, all
that will happen here is that you'll be told to RTFM, possibly with
a pointer to the appropriate FM to read. This happens because if
there's already a good explanation of the problem and its solution
somewhere, then it's better to point the querent at that than to
answer it all over again, which takes substantially more time and
effort -- and the help you're getting here is FREE, donated by
VOLUNTEERS.
* Read at least the questions in the Perl FAQ. If your question or
something very similar is there, read the answer. If there's an
answer there and you ask the question here, all that will happen
here is that you'll be told to RTFF, possibly with a pointer to the
appropriate entry to read. This happens for much the same reason:
the FAQ entries are there because many people asked the same
question, and so instead of investing their effort in writing a
hundred different responses, the FAQ authors and maintainers
invested their effort into writing one very good response and
checking it extensively for accuracy.
* If you find the answer somewhere else and don't understand it, by
all means say so, and try to ask specifically about what you don't
understand. This lets people know that (a) you're willing to invest
your own effort and do research on your own, which means you're not
one of the "write my program for me for free!" sorts of posters; and
(b) you'll get responses that aren't just 'RTFM!' because it's clear
that you already have and are asking about something you don't
understand.
* If you've asked a question before and gotten advice, make sure you
are following that advice when you ask your next question. You can
see this trend with Robin: when he first started asking his
questions, people were horrified at the bugs in his code, and
offered advice. Now, several weeks later, he's posting code with
the same bad habits and the same bugs, and the reaction has changed
from horrified but helpful to "shut up and go away, troll who is
unwilling to learn."
* Remember that the people here are volunteers. Many of us are quite
willing to tutor people in Perl, just not for free and not over
Usenet. If you need extensive help and prefer to be walked through
things by a tutor instead of teaching yourself based on a good book,
then you're not going to be very satisfied with the experience
here. Find a local Perl teacher, and pay him or her $30 an hour to
teach you; or take a programming class at your local community
college. Everyone will be happier that way.
Charlton
T
Tassilo v. Parseval
Also sprach Charlton Wilbur:
What you list are four books. None of them is a manual and hence RTFM
can't apply to any of them.
People need to have a preliminary scan through the perldocs and the
FAQs. That's all there is to do before posting.
Tassilo
What you list are four books. None of them is a manual and hence RTFM
can't apply to any of them.
People need to have a preliminary scan through the perldocs and the
FAQs. That's all there is to do before posting.
Tassilo
G
Gunnar Hjalmarsson
Tassilo said:
I agree. But don't forget that quite a few posters seem to not have a
clue of the language. Asking them to "scan through the perldocs and
the FAQs" is not very meaningful.
What I'm trying to say is that in order to 'qualify' for asking for
help with a specific Perl programming issue, people should first have
gained a minimum level of Perl knowledge. Not sure what that would be
- maybe perlintro?
So yes, people should have RTFM first. But to be able to do so, they
need to know *something*. Accordingly, knowing *something* should also
be a requirement.
C
ctcgag
pfancy said:
I was new to perl not that long ago, and I found
this group extremely helpful.
Xho
J
James Willmore
Post a question here and you'll get a response
We do Perl here If you want something to get you started, read the documentation that
comes with Perl. perldoc is the utility to read Perl documentation. For
your starting place, type
perldoc perl
and read
This *should* spark some further reading.And, you could just read some of the posts here in this newsgroup to see
if what you needed answered has been asked and answered before
HTH
--
Jim
Copyright notice: all code written by the author in this post is
released under the GPL. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
for more information.
a fortune quote ...
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
P
pfancy
http://jobs.perl.orgUri Guttman said:
Forgive me for insulting but some of you in this group insulted me. (it was
one of the perl groups.) I asked for help and I got insulted. So I don't
know what more to say. I am absolutely new beginner of perl and I need help
if anyone is willing to help me out if not. OH well.
P
pfancy
Believe it or not. The first thing I did was read books look for beginningCharlton Wilbur said:
perl online and I did not find what is recommended to be download and what
to use to run perl. So I ask for it here. Maybe I just get upset when I
see people asking for help and they get pushed around. I know they are some
people who ask for help before research and they are some that do research
first and get the cold shoulder for asking for help. Some of us are slow
learners. but that doesn't mean we are dumb. because some of us are very
bright once it clicks in our brains. Just thought I would express myself.
You know I am looking into taking a course.
P
pfancy
Tassilo v. Parseval said:
I read through that and I did not understand. It doesn't tell me how to or
where to find the program to write perl in. that what gets me. I downloaded
active perl active perl dev. etc. but I am still lost.
R
Randal L. Schwartz
pfancy> Forgive me for insulting but some of you in this group
pfancy> insulted me. (it was one of the perl groups.) I asked for
pfancy> help and I got insulted.
I know of nobody here that intentionally insults *people* (except Uri;
he gets close sometimes. What precisely are you calling an insult?
Give us a URL from "groups.google.com" for best verification.
print "Just another Perl hacker,";
pfancy> insulted me. (it was one of the perl groups.) I asked for
pfancy> help and I got insulted.
I know of nobody here that intentionally insults *people* (except Uri;
he gets close sometimes
. What precisely are you calling an insult?Give us a URL from "groups.google.com" for best verification.
print "Just another Perl hacker,";
P
Paul Lalli
"the program to write perl in". This implies you don't know how to write
*any* computer language. Is that correct? If so, that is likely the
cause of your inability to get the exact help you're looking for. This
discussion is about the Perl language specifically. It seems what you
need is a tutorial on "how to write computer programs".
The answer to this question, btw, is that you can use *any* text editor to
write programs. Many people will reccommend one above all others (such as
emacs, vi, or textpad). Others will tell you to just write in anything
that makes you comfortable, perhaps even Notepad. One thing we will all
tell you is to NEVER use a word processor like MS Word, unless you're
fully prepared to constantly undo all its 'helpful' corrections and always
remember to save your document in plain text.
Paul Lalli
P.S. I did a groups.google search to find what thread you were referring
to - your email exists only in this thread. Did you use a different
address when you claim to have been 'insulted'? Can you point us to the
insulting message(s)?
U
Uri Guttman
pfancy> Forgive me for insulting but some of you in this group
pfancy> insulted me. (it was one of the perl groups.) I asked for
pfancy> help and I got insulted.
RLS> I know of nobody here that intentionally insults *people* (except
RLS> Uri; he gets close sometimes. What precisely are you calling
RLS> an insult? Give us a URL from "groups.google.com" for best
RLS> verification.
randal, you are a frumious bandersnatch!
uri
pfancy> insulted me. (it was one of the perl groups.) I asked for
pfancy> help and I got insulted.
RLS> I know of nobody here that intentionally insults *people* (except
RLS> Uri; he gets close sometimes
. What precisely are you callingRLS> an insult? Give us a URL from "groups.google.com" for best
RLS> verification.
randal, you are a frumious bandersnatch!
uri
R
Robin
Forgive me for insulting but some of you in this group insulted me. (it
was
I wouldn't really call it an insult, at least the "insults" that I've gotten
aren't really insults per say, but hardcore examples of critism, though I
wish I'd get a little bit more friendly responses. Post your code, even if
it's really simple so the group can see.
Overall, this is the best perl group I've discovered, at least in my
opinion.
was
I wouldn't really call it an insult, at least the "insults" that I've gotten
aren't really insults per say, but hardcore examples of critism, though I
wish I'd get a little bit more friendly responses. Post your code, even if
it's really simple so the group can see.
Overall, this is the best perl group I've discovered, at least in my
opinion.
J
Jürgen Exner
pfancy said:
What? You can write your Perl program in any editor you like. Use vi or
emacs or even Notepad or ed if you really don't have anything better.
The religious war about "what is the best editor to write Perl programs"
resurfaces here about every 2 to 3 months.
Besides, there is even an FAQ entry: "perldoc -q editor" yields
Is there an IDE or Windows Perl Editor?
Perl programs are just plain text, so any editor will do.
If you're on Unix, you already have an IDE--Unix itself. The
UNIX philosophy is the philosophy of several small tools that
each do one thing and do it well. It's like a carpenter's
toolbox.
If you want a Windows IDE, check the following:
CodeMagicCD
http://www.codemagiccd.com/
Komodo
ActiveState's cross-platform, multi-language IDE has Perl
support, including a regular expression debugger and remote
debugging
(http://www.ActiveState.com/Products/Komodo/index.html).
(Visual Perl, a Visual Studio.NET plug-in is currently
(early 2001) in beta
(http://www.ActiveState.com/Products/VisualPerl/index.html))
J
Jeff Boes
pfancy said:
The following resources should be investigated when looking for starting
points in learning or improving your Perl skills:
http://learn.perl.org/
http://perlmonks.org/
http://perl.com/pub/q/resources
As with many such free training resources, you get only modestly more
than you pay for, and no more than what you put in. Your *best* approach
for learning Perl is to find a college-level course in programming Perl
(if you already know a computer language). If you know nearly nothing
about programming (hint: how many of the following terms could you
define without recourse to a book? function, compiler, variable, control
structure, debug, loop. If your answer wasn't "all of them", then maybe
you need to learn how to program *first*), then you should investigate a
100-level course in programming using nearly *any* language, and only
*then* come back to Perl. (If you can find a college-level class in
learning to program that uses Perl, congratuate yourself on extreme good
fortune.)
Do not take the advice in this message as an insult to you. I do not
know your programming background, so I'm assuming the worst. Also,
messages like this get read by dozens of other seekers of Perl help, so
I'm writing for them, too.
As to the other respondents to this thread that jumped on the original
poster for the perceived insult to "the group", *rather* than offering
help, shame on you.
M
Matt Garrish
Paul Lalli said:
I remember he got a little flame in alt.perl a while back. Made some
misguided claims about Linux being a bigger resource hog than XP. He needs a
much thicker skin if that's what's eating at him:
http://tinyurl.com/2gc7w
Matt
P
pfancy
I can't remember which group it was it has been a while. I took a break.
P
pfancy
0
Programming Perl O' Reilly
Does that help out some?
Abigail said:
Programming Perl O' Reilly
Does that help out some?