[Chicago-talk] How To Get People Started With Perl Using a Perl Mongers Group

David Mertens dcmertens.perl at gmail.com
Fri May 17 08:27:08 PDT 2013


Last fall, Dave Cross gave a free (I think) intro-to-Perl workshop, in
London. It seems to have been a great success if the commentary on LinkedIn
is correct. We should talk with him about his materials. He may even have
placed them on the web for free. Also, I would expect that brian could
offer some insights about advertising and give other advice. He may also
have material, and it is worth asking if we could use that to develop our
own introductory material.

That said, this thread has caused me to think about Perl education writ
large. To avoid writing a tome, let me just list out my ideas, and how our
workshops could fit into them and complement them:

   1. Advertise around the city, obviously. We should also reach out to the
   Linux User Group and other techy user groups. Cast a wide net, even for
   people who don't know Perl very well.
   2. Write and/or polish vti's Interactive Perl Tutorials at
   http://perltuts.com/ and direct interested noobs there.
   3. Write a collection of competency "tutorials" on perltuts so that
   people can actually assess what they do and do not know about Perl. This
   way, if we want those attending the Intro to Moose workshop to know about
   data structures, we can give them a place to measure their competency, and
   suggest resources where they can study up, before they come to the workshop.
   4. We would provide a collection of post-workshop resources, such as
   relevant chapters in various books, links to the appropriate mailing lists,
   Perl Mongers, and any recommendations for Perl blogs, bloggers, or
   periodicals that might help attendees stay on top of their new-found
   knowledge. For example, if we had an intro workshop on basic CMS with
   Galileo, we would tell attendees to follow Joel's blogs since he blogs
   regularly about updates and gives usage examples. perlbuzz, the Perl
   Review, and Perl Weekly are obvious catch-alls as well.

Given what I've read about other languages' intro workshops, I think there
*is* interest in basic Perl workshops, but I don't know how easily we would
be able to gauge the size of attendees. From what I've read about basic
workshops for other languages, free full-day workshops sponsored by a
company seems to be the best route. I get the impression that attendees see
these are real opportunities, and actually go through the effort to RSVP
for the events, allowing their organizers to respond appropriately.

Anyway, I'm mostly thinking aloud.

David


On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 11:03 PM, Mike Fragassi <mikefrag at gmail.com> wrote:

> That all sounds good to me.
>
>
> On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Doug Bell <madcityzen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> That's a good idea. An evolving set of Modern Perl Presentations on
>> topics that pick up where beginners tutorials leave off.
>>
>> Though I'd think it'd be better to title them with the broader
>> programming topic they're about: Modern Perl OO, Automated Testing, Linting
>> and Static Analysis, Module Boilerplate, etc...
>>
>> I've also thought that using Chromatic's Modern Perl book as a guide for
>> a set of tutorial-level presentations might be a good idea.
>>
>> Perhaps we could start a Github project to develop this kind of content?
>>
>> On May 7, 2013, at 7:45 AM, Mike Fragassi <mikefrag at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Well, the people who come to the meetings probably know enough Perl to be
>> on the list and show up in the first place, so they wouldn't need the
>> extremely low-level Perl 101 lectures.  Maybe if there are a bunch of
>> non-Perlers who are either lurking on the list (maybe a survey/show of
>> hands is called for?), or if the Meetup.com recommendation engine is
>> actually being used by people.
>>
>> A "Modern Perl 101" might be useful.  I.e. Moose, Test::More, PerlCritic,
>> Module::Starter, etc.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 12:38 AM, Doug Bell <madcityzen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Project Nights are times for anyone to come work on code, ask questions
>>> relating to code, show off code, and get ideas for code. So far, they've
>>> been working out pretty well.
>>>
>>> But what if you're not yet at the level of "writing Perl code"? How can
>>> we better help people get started with Perl? I usually only see these kinds
>>> of presentations during special times as part of a larger conference or
>>> workshop, but those only happen so often and in certain parts of the
>>> country.
>>>
>>> Is this even a topic that can be handled well by a user group? I can
>>> imagine a lot of repeat presentations (perhaps even a set of presentations,
>>> rotated through), with some "Get up-to-speed" time at the beginning for the
>>> things like "Installing Perl" and "How to run Perl code".
>>>
>>> Anyone have any thoughts, ideas, or opinions?
>>>
>>> Doug Bell
>>> madcityzen at gmail.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
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-- 
 "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
  Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
  by definition, not smart enough to debug it." -- Brian Kernighan
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