[roch-pm] [Fwd: www.perl.com: Beginners Intro to Perl - Part 2]

[Brian Mathis]

-------- Original Message --------
From: "www.perl.com update" <onperl at lists.oreillynet.com>
Subject: www.perl.com: Beginners Intro to Perl - Part 2
Resent-From: perl-update at lists.oreillynet.com
To: <perl-update at pepper.oreillynet.com>

         www.perl.com update
--------------------------------------
The Email for www.perl.com Subscribers


============================================================
Sponsored by Allaire

Register for a FREE Allaire ColdFusion Seminar!

Discover why ColdFusion is the industry's Number One cross- 
platform Web application server, giving you the power to 
develop and deliver scalable Web apps quickly and easily. You 
could also win free ColdFusion products! Register now at
http://www.allaire.com/cfcyber/Perl1

============================================================


Hello, perl.com subscribers.

Perl 5.7 is imminent; it will be the unstable development release that
will eventually lead up to Perl 5.8.  Trial releases are out now.  (If
you don't know where to find them, you probably shouldn't be using
them.)

The only other thing that I noticed happening this week was that
there was some discussion about my (extremely negative) critique of
the Perl 6 RFC process.  It generated some light, and unfortunately
rather more heat.  I got a lot of mail from people who said that they
had noticed the same things but weren't sure how to say them, and some
mail from people who felt that I exaggerated the problems.  The public
response (on the perl6-meta mailing list) was more generally negative.

All together, the article did not really accomplish what I had hoped.
I wanted people to discuss the problems of the RFC process in more
detail.  But this didn't really happen---people mostly seemed
interested in refuting my article.  It doesn't bother me that people
thought that parts of my article were wrong or misguided, but I wish
that they had taken some time to try to work out the problems that
were pointed out by the parts they *didn't* think were wrong or
misguided.  Even people who had agreed with me in private took the
opportunity to say in public how wrong they thought I was, and left 
it at that.

Not to say that there wasn't worthwhile discussion.  There was some.
One of the brightest spots was Jarkko Hietaniemi's response.  Jarkko
graciously allowed us to put his reply on www.perl.com; you can find
it at http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/11/jarkko.html

Even I felt better after reading it.  (We have also provided links to
the transcript of the talk Larry recently gave about Perl 6 at the
Atlanta Linux Showcase.)

One person on the perl6-meta mailing list pointed out that you would
not see a criticism of Java on the front page of sun.com.  He's
probably right---and I would like to think that that is one of the
great advantages that Perl has over Java.

Another interesting response was from someone who suggested that Perl
community leaders should try to use their influence to get O'Reilly 
to pull the article off the web site.  I was glad to see that the
response to this suggestion was so immediately negative.

* What's New on the Site?

Doug Sheppard continues his series of articles that explain Perl for
beginners.  This week Doug discusses "The Other Two R's"---that is,
Reading and Riting.  The new article is available at:

        http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/11/begperl2.html

In case you missed it, the first article in this series is still at:

        http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/10/begperl1.html

Thank you all.  I will be in touch again next week.

Mark Dominus
Managing Editor

***

Beginner's Introduction to Perl - Part 2
http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/11/begperl2.html?wwwrrr_20001108.txt
The second part in a new series that introduces Perl to people
who haven't programmed before.  This week: Files and strings. 
If you weren't sure how to get started with Perl, here's your
chance!

 
Article: Hold the Sackcloth and Ashes
http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/11/jarkko.html?wwwrrr_20001108.txt
Jarkko Hietaniemi, the Perl release manager, responds to the
critique of the Perl 6 RFC process. 

 
Article: Critique of the Perl 6 RFC Process
http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/11/perl6rfc.html?wwwrrr_20001108.txt
Many of the suggestions put forward during the Perl 6
request-for-comment period revealed a lack of understanding of
the internals and limitations of the language. Mark-Jason
Dominus offers these criticisms in hopes that future RFCs may
avoid the same mistakes -- and the wasted effort. 

 
Perl Conference: State of the Onion 2000
http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/10/23/soto2000.html?wwwrrr_20001108.txt
Larry Wall's annual report on the state of Perl, from TPC 4.0
(the fourth annual Perl conference) in Monterey in July 2000. In
this full length transcript, Larry talks about the need for
changes, which has led to the effort to rewrite the language in
Perl 6.

 
Programming GNOME Applications with Perl
http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/10/gnome.html?wwwrrr_20001108.txt
Simon Cozens shows us how to use Perl to develop applications for
Gnome, the Unix desktop environment.  

 
Beginner's Introduction to Perl
http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/10/begperl1.html?wwwrrr_20001108.txt
The first part in a new series that introduces Perl to people who
haven't programmed before. If you weren't sure how to get
started with Perl, here's your chance!



         Sister Sites:
---------------------------------
O'Reilly Network
http://www.oreillynet.com
The Source for Open and Emerging Technologies

XML.com
http://xml.com/
XML from the inside out.

O'Reilly and Associates
http://www.oreilly.com/
O'Reilly computer books, software and online publishing.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to cancel a subscription to this newsletter,
please email the word "unsubscribe" in the SUBJECT of the message to
perl-update-request at pepper.oreillynet.com. 

NOTE: Please make certain to unsubscribe from the email 
address at which you receive this message

For non-automated human help email onperl at oreillynet.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
--
For information on unsubscribing from this list, please visit
http://rochester.pm.org