[Melbourne-pm] Melbourne-pm Digest, Vol 66, Issue 2
ajthornton
jdthornton at ozemail.com.au
Fri Oct 2 14:47:10 PDT 2009
Not that Arthur Griffiths!!
U meant the computer programmer who does the tutorials on Java on VTC.
John
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Bamboozled by perl (Toby Corkindale)
2. Padre IDE (ajthornton)
3. Re: FW: Bamboozled by perl (Shlomi Fish)
4. Re: Padre IDE (Scott Penrose)
5. Re: Padre IDE (Daniel Pittman)
6. Re: Padre IDE (Andrew Savige)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:56:19 +1000
From: Toby Corkindale <toby.corkindale at strategicdata.com.au>
Subject: Re: [Melbourne-pm] Bamboozled by perl
To: melbourne-pm <melbourne-pm at pm.org>
Message-ID: <4AC587F3.10102 at strategicdata.com.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
ajthornton wrote:
> OK. That works! :)
>
> I have a folder called perlstuff with source code in it so I went cd
> perlstuff and then perl perlme.pl
>
> I get hello world in the terminal as desired.
>
> OK. Your reward for helping me is that I will try to like Perl!!!!! I
> am in the final analysis pragmatic; if a language helps my health,
> welath and happiness I will persist with it. I even had fun with
> Prolog a few months ago. I grabbed a free IDE and some tutorials and
> actually some progress, albeit ata beginner level, and had a lot of
> fun. I thought that I would give it up after 5 mins - I had heard that it
was this weird language that
> did this out there AI stuff. But I was still going after a few weeks.
BTW
> when I was at Software Freedom Day I didn't see a Perl stand. That was
> a pity because at least you would have got in a lightning talk about
> perl/perl groups.
>
> I really missed the bus with programming. If I were 18 0r 20 right now
> I would go to uni or TAFE and get a Bsc in computer science. But I was
> in the wrong era. It was 1992. I left school computer illiterate. I
> couldn't turn a computer on or put a disk in the disk drive. I failed
> reasoning and data maths [the worst freaking unit of maths ever
> clunked together by eduational eggheads - teachers treated it like it
> was an insult to teach it; "that's a year 8 maths unit" was said so
> often, never mind that a chapter had calculus so difficult in the
> Rehill/macauliffe book that you wouldn't do it until the later years
> of an undergraduate maths program , if then, oh man that was so all
> over the shop that I wondered what the hell I had done in a previous
> life to deserve such tripe.] because I couldn't operate a computer and
> use Minitab. Then the teacher came up with this psychobabble that I was
"technophobic". There was no notion of responsibility in teaching computers.
> For a start what about giving me a mouse???
Hi John,
I only left high school slightly later than you, and I'm probably one of the
younger Perl coders in our group! My school had a single Commodore
64 per class, and there were certainly no mice around.
I learnt to program in the 1980s on scrounged hardware that makes your
recent "junk" computer look like a supercomputer, and back then had to learn
out of "Learn to program" books and an old Olivetti or IBM BASIC reference
manual, without anyone else to ask for help.
I believe a lot of other coders also just picked up the language through
self-learning.
What I'm saying is that you can't blame a lack of tertiary education for
"missing the bus" on programming. It's quite possible to learn yourself
without too much difficult. Just follow some tutorials, ask here if you get
stuck, and I'm sure you'll be there in no time!
Also, there is a Melbourne-based organisation which provides Perl training
in a more "classical" (ie. classroom + lab) environment, if that's more your
way of learning. Have a chat to Paul and Jacinta at Perl Training Australia
for that - they're world-renowned! :)
> But like I said, I am going to try to like Perl. It must have
> something going for it if it's included off the bat in PuppyLinux.
>
> At least programming is something tnat can be learnt. There's stuff
> that's "you have got it or you haven't". Music and drawing certainly
> fit that category. Maths probably does. But I do think that anyone can
> program. Some people might be better at it etc. But anyone can learn
> to do it. Unlike other things. I could plaster a blackboard with power
> series in maths. But give me year 6 primary school maths problem
> solving and I am stuffed. Once I had a third year maths unit where I
> got 90 percent for texbook work and 10 percent for probalem solving
> and passed with 56%. I don't know what lateral thinking means. Indeed
> Edward De Bono probably meant it in a different way to how it is used
> now. But I am convinced in any case that I have the lateral thinking
> ability of a pile of cement. In problam solving it's where to start
> that kills me. Often I don't get past that pt - a blank sheet of paper.
>
> John
Well, just try an old trick.. If you don't know where to start, just start
anywhere! (And then work organically out from there)
Cheers,
Toby
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 15:21:27 +1000
From: "ajthornton" <jdthornton at ozemail.com.au>
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Padre IDE
To: <melbourne-pm at pm.org>
Message-ID: <12275AFADEB7404DBE43A8332427A4AB at homepc>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
So, one thing that I have to ask. Great help so far! According to
Arthur Griffiths it is unwise in Java to have both IDE and command line on
the same machine - he says that it makes the programming "unstable" and "you
can't really trust it".
So with Padre, will it cause instability to have both it and command
line perl on the same machine?
John
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:51:19 +0200
From: Shlomi Fish <shlomif at iglu.org.il>
Subject: Re: [Melbourne-pm] FW: Bamboozled by perl
To: melbourne-pm at pm.org
Cc: ajthornton <jdthornton at ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <200910020751.19714.shlomif at iglu.org.il>
Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Hi John!
See below for my response.
On Friday 02 Oct 2009 06:37:15 ajthornton wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ajthornton [mailto:jdthornton at ozemail.com.au]
> Sent: Friday, 2 October 2009 2:37 PM
> To: 'Toby Corkindale'
> Subject: RE: [Melbourne-pm] Bamboozled by perl
>
> OK. That works! :)
>
> I have a folder called perlstuff with source code in it so I went cd
> perlstuff and then perl perlme.pl
>
> I get hello world in the terminal as desired.
>
> OK. Your reward for helping me is that I will try to like Perl!!!!! I
> am in the final analysis pragmatic; if a language helps my health,
> welath and happiness I will persist with it. I even had fun with
> Prolog a few months ago. I grabbed a free IDE and some tutorials and
> actually some progress, albeit ata beginner level, and had a lot of
> fun. I thought that I would give it up after 5 mins - I had heard that it
was this weird language that
> did this out there AI stuff. But I was still going after a few weeks.
Cool. I tried Prolog too a while ago, but I could not find a decent online
tutorial. The closest I found was http://www.learnprolognow.org/ , but it
had a lot of typos and missing stuff. So I have temporarily given up on it.
> BTW
> when I was at Software Freedom Day I didn't see a Perl stand. That was
> a pity because at least you would have got in a lightning talk about
> perl/perl groups.
>
> I really missed the bus with programming. If I were 18 0r 20 right now
> I would go to uni or TAFE and get a Bsc in computer science. But I was
> in the wrong era. It was 1992. I left school computer illiterate. I
> couldn't turn a computer on or put a disk in the disk drive. I failed
> reasoning and data maths [the worst freaking unit of maths ever
> clunked together by eduational eggheads - teachers treated it like it
> was an insult to teach it; "that's a year 8 maths unit" was said so
> often, never mind that a chapter had calculus so difficult in the
> Rehill/macauliffe book that you wouldn't do it until the later years
> of an undergraduate maths program , if then, oh man that was so all
> over the shop that I wondered what the hell I had done in a previous
> life to deserve such tripe.] because I couldn't operate a computer
> and use Minitab. Then the teacher came up with this psychobabble that
> I was "technophobic". There was no notion of responsibility in
> teaching computers. For a start what about giving me a mouse???
Interesting. Did you graduate from Uni in 1992 or from high school? In any
case, I should note that with the right attitude and spirit, it's never too
late to learn new things and become proficient in programming or almost
anything else. See for example:
http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/advice-for-the-young/
(also see the links)
http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/education/introductory-
language/
(short URL - http://shlom.in/intro-lang )
>
> But like I said, I am going to try to like Perl. It must have
> something going for it if it's included off the bat in PuppyLinux.
The reason is probably because /usr/bin/perl is part of the Linux Standard
Base:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/lsb
And it is used extensively by many scripts and other programs on Linux
because writing scripts in Perl 5 is much more robust than writing them in
shell/sed/awk and Python cannot effectively be used from the command-line
(i.e: like {{{ perl -e '....' }}}).
Reportedly, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) people decided to avoid having
to install Perl and they ran into many problems with programs that
implicitly required /usr/bin/perl.
>
> At least programming is something tnat can be learnt. There's stuff
> that's "you have got it or you haven't". Music and drawing certainly
> fit that category. Maths probably does. But I do think that anyone can
> program. Some people might be better at it etc. But anyone can learn
> to do it. Unlike other things. I could plaster a blackboard with power
> series in maths. But give me year 6 primary school maths problem
> solving and I am stuffed. Once I had a third year maths unit where I
> got 90 percent for texbook work and 10 percent for probalem solving
> and passed with 56%. I don't know what lateral thinking means. Indeed
> Edward De Bono probably meant it in a different way to how it is used
> now. But I am convinced in any case that I have the lateral thinking
> ability of a pile of cement. In problam solving it's where to start
> that kills me. Often I don't get past that pt - a blank sheet of paper.
>
Welcome aboard! But don't underestimate yourself.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
My Aphorisms - http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html
Chuck Norris read the entire English Wikipedia in 24 hours. Twice.
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 15:53:16 +1000
From: Scott Penrose <scottp at dd.com.au>
Subject: Re: [Melbourne-pm] Padre IDE
To: "ajthornton" <jdthornton at ozemail.com.au>
Cc: melbourne-pm at pm.org
Message-ID: <576D7939-F01F-4EA6-BDAB-5F145A4CC3E8 at dd.com.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed; delsp=yes
On 02/10/2009, at 3:21 PM, ajthornton wrote:
>
> So, one thing that I have to ask. Great help so far!
> According to
> Arthur Griffiths it is unwise in Java to have both IDE and command
> line on the same machine - he says that it makes the programming
> "unstable"
> and "you
> can't really trust it".
I have to say that I don't believe that in Perl or Java.
Scott
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:45:06 +1000
From: Daniel Pittman <daniel at rimspace.net>
Subject: Re: [Melbourne-pm] Padre IDE
To: melbourne-pm at pm.org
Message-ID: <87ab0aqop9.fsf at rimspace.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Scott Penrose <scottp at dd.com.au> writes:
> On 02/10/2009, at 3:21 PM, ajthornton wrote:
>
>> So, one thing that I have to ask. Great help so far! According to
>> Arthur Griffiths it is unwise in Java to have both IDE and command
>> line on the same machine - he says that it makes the programming
>> "unstable" and "you can't really trust it".
>
> I have to say that I don't believe that in Perl or Java.
O_o I have to agree with Scott: I can't imagine why Arthur Griffiths argues
this, because is it so ... crazy, basically.
The closest I can come to any sort of explanation would be if you used an
IDE written in Java that shipped another version of the JVM, or something
like that.
Having multiple, accidental installed versions of the same language
environment /could/ lead to problems, maybe.
So, um, no.
Daniel
--
? Daniel Pittman ? daniel at rimspace.net ? +61 401 155
707
? made with 100 percent post-consumer electrons
Looking for work? Love Perl? In Melbourne, Australia? We are hiring.
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 05:16:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Andrew Savige <ajsavige at yahoo.com.au>
Subject: Re: [Melbourne-pm] Padre IDE
To: ajthornton <jdthornton at ozemail.com.au>, melbourne-pm at pm.org
Message-ID: <308700.32225.qm at web56405.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
ajthornton?wrote:??????
> According to Arthur Griffiths it is unwise in Java to have both IDE
> and command line on the same machine - he says that it makes the
> programming "unstable" and "you can't really trust it".
Who is this Arthur Griffiths person?
Is this him? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Griffiths
In any case, the remarks attributed to him above sound like muddled
superstition to me.
Cheers,
/-\
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