Perl class at the JC

Tue Jan 6 11:29:12 CST 2004

Someone hasn't had their coffee yet.  I offer the following in reply:

1) Perl people are pedantic.
2) Perl people find seemingly inconsequential details amusing.
3) Perl people love to flex their sarcasm skills.
4) Perl people are mostly harmless.

-gb

* On  5-Jan-2004 at  7:51PM PST, Sean Kirkpatrick said:
> 
> Thanks to you all for your delightfully amusing but utterly irrelevant 
> commentary on what is certainly the *least* most significant part of the 
> process. I can't tell you when I've laughed so hard. You must understand 
> though that the Title V outlines for most of the courses offered by the 
> JC are written by and for folks who have one thing in mind: the 
> administration and management of the institution, and not the delivery 
> of educational content. Sometime over a beer (you're buying, of course), 
> I'll tell you just how bogus it all is. ( "...theory as it relates to 
> practice..." - what the hell does *that* mean?)
> 
> I offer you all the following:
> 
> 1)    If you do have some serious suggestions about how to improve the 
> course, please let me know. As an adjunct faculty member who receives no 
> compensation for the extra duties of improving *actual* coursework, I 
> find it nonsensical in the extreme to create extra work for myself by 
> revising Title V descriptions that only serve to make some PhD or VP all 
> squishy inside. However, I am always willing to incorporate new ideas 
> and suggestions to make the educational content better and more 
> relevant. I especially appreciate these suggestions from those who are 
> actually working in the field, and not just collecting degrees.
> 
> 2)    Consider the possibilty of putting your knowledge where your 
> attitude is by enrolling, and then offering to *teach* a class or two. 
> You may (or may not) be a hell-of-a-programmer, but do you have what it 
> takes to keep a class of widely disparate abilities entertained and 
> learning? My last Perl class had an age range of 20 (she actually 
> skipped class one night to go to her 21st b-day party!) to 60, novices 
> with 1 semester of programming to sysadmins, including 2 "Managers". 
> Some of them were actually *interested* in CGI with perl. Can you imagine?
> 
> 3)    Do remember that this is an "introduction to" and not a graduate 
> level course in Object Oriented Programming in Perl. (The _sensibility_ 
> of doing OOPerl - just because you can doesn't mean that you should - is 
> another topic, and we'll debate that over the second beer that you're 
> going to buy me.)
> 
> 4)    Does it *really* matter whether it capitalized or not? Life is far 
> to short to fight meaningless battles (though it appears that W is 
> clueless on this point also). OTOH, if you're truly serious about your 
> windmills, there is a new translation of Don Quixote published recently. 
> I've heard that it's quite good.
> 
> See you next week, or not.
> 
>    Sean
> 
> Mike Wong and several others wrote:
> 
> >Or maybe he's invoking the Pathalogically Eclectic Rubbish Lister form
> >of Perl. In which case, I'd say that the course description very much
> >qualifies.
> >
> >On the other hand, it leads me to wonder who would be interested in CGI
> >programming post-web boom. My own suspicions (backed by a recent
> >experience) leads me to believe that the candidate will likely be an MIS
> >majour. IMHO, MIS majours are interested in CGI from a reduce-IT-costs
> >business point-of-view and not interested in the technology or the
> >culture (or such minour things as implementation and accuracy). Their
> >only interest in technology is that some of these poor souls believe
> >that they will be qualified to manage technical people after taking a
> >few courses.
> >
> >I suspect that the description has been written to appeal to such
> >people, who don't like reading and thinking, but do like telling others
> >what technology to use. I wonder what this means for the JC's agenda?
> >
> >- m.
> >
> >On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 14:51, Kevin Bingham wrote:
> > 
> >
> >>DESCRIPTION
> >><snip>
> >>PERL is a programming language for writing CGI applications. It's main 
> >>strength is that it doesn't have any unnecessary warnings or strictures. 
> >>It is a direct descendent of Perl, a programming language which was used 
> >>mainly by programmers. However, the original language required too much 
> >>reading and thinking and so PERL was developed as a language which was 
> >>more in tune with the requirements of the Internet age.
> >></snip>
> >>
> >><ROTFLMAO>
> >>
> >>
> >>-Kevin
> >>
> >>At 02:36 PM 1/5/2004 -0800, Tom Anderson (Thomas H) wrote:
> >>   
> >>
> >>>Perhaps he intends to use the Inline::PERL module.
> >>>
> >>>Check out
> >>>http://search.cpan.org/~jmcnamara/Acme-Inline-PERL-0.01/PERL.pm
> >>>
> >>>"It should work perfectly the first time" -toma
> >>>
> >>>-Tom
> >>>
> >>>Gene Boggs wrote:
> >>>
> >>>     
> >>>
> >>>>>CIS 54.31  Perl & CGI
> >>>>>6675    T        6:00pm- 8:00pm         KIRKPATRICK
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Description:    An introduction to PERL (program extraction report
> >>>>>language) which is used to create common gateway interface (CGI) 
> >>>>>scripts
> >>>>>for use in Internet web sites. Emphasis will be placed on theory as it
> >>>>>relates to practice. Students will create original Perl scripts from 
> >>>>>the
> >>>>>Internet which they will revise. Lab emphasis will be placed on
> >>>>>incorporating the Perl scripts into an existing web site.  (Credit 
> >>>>>course
> >>>>>for grade or CR/NC)
> >>>>>         
> >>>>>
> >>>>A couple problems here:
> >>>>
> >>>>1) PERL is not written in ALL CAPS because..
> >>>>
> >>>>2) ..it is not an acronym and hasn't been quite a few years now.
> >>>>
> >>>>3) Also that is the wrong acronym anyway.  It's actually "Practical
> >>>>extraction and reporting language".
> >>>>
> >>>>This makes me wonder about the quality of such a course when the
> >>>>description is not even close with respect to such simple little
> >>>>things.
> >>>>
> >>>>-Gene Boggs