[Pdx-pm] Starting from scratch with Module::Build

[Michael G Schwern]

On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 06:05:00PM -0700, Marvin Humphrey wrote:
> It is much *easier* to scan through a distro saying, "looks good,  
> looks good, oops looks wrong better fix that", than it is to scan  
> through a distro saying "is anything missing, is anything missing, is  
> anything missing".

Humans might be able to eyeball "looks good" but try to teach a computer
to figure that out.  You can't eyeball all of CPAN.  Its much easier to 
teach a computer to recognize if something is missing than if something 
"looks good".  h2xs' ubiquity and uniformity just gives you a crib to give 
you one possible "looks bad" but you're not really checking to see if 
something is "good".

For example, its easier to look for the lack of POD than to see if its
poor documentation.  Tools such as Pod::Coverage take advantage of this.
Its easier to look for no tests, or poorly covering tests, than for "good"
tests.


-- 
Michael G Schwern     schwern at pobox.com     http://www.pobox.com/~schwern
ROCKS FALL! EVERYONE DIES!
	http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp05032002.shtml