OC-PM: Next meeting...

[Wilson, Douglas]

> How about some examples of how Perl can be of use to someone new to the
language, 
> how say, someone new to the language can go about creating a useful tool
to help them
> with their daily work.

I think one of the problems with that is that everyone has a different
type of daily work. If we could start some discussion on the list about
what sorts of things we do, need to do, would like to do, etc., we could
get an idea about what to talk about at the next meeting, and maybe someone
would feel inspired enough to talk about how to do something, what module(s)
to
use, how to use them, etc.

Another problem is that when you're new to something you sometimes don't
know
what questions to ask yet, but with discussion we may be able to nail down
the
questions and maybe even the answer for you :-) (and that's a general 'you'
aimed at no one in particular).

> Or perhaps a basic discussion on different formats and layouts of the
language.
> Perl is quite diverse and many people have many ideas of how it should
> look and perform, it's a tad daunting for a newbie with so many options to
> choose from. It would also be interesting for the veterans to be able to
share
> how they feel it should be and also maybe get more ideas.

I think this was discussed briefly at the last meeting (at least the 'how it
looks' part), and one answer was to start with 'perldoc perlstyle' as a
basic guideline, though you're not expected to agree on everything in there.
Most variations on style can be supplied as options to 'perltidy' (just
google
for 'perltidy'), which can impose a consistent style for a perl-shop of many
people
working on the same code.

-Doug