dc2000's Journal

Dear Template Toolkit reader

dc2000 — 2006-09-29T14:42:06+00:00

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have expressed interest in "Perl
Template Toolkit" by Darren Chamberlain have also ordered "Programming
Python" by Mark Lutz. For this reason, you might like to know that Mark
Lutz's "Programming Python" is now available. You can order your copy ...

mathworks, bioperl

dc2000 — 2005-07-30T17:10:40+00:00

Mathworks newsletter 2005 July give a friendly report on bioperl.

Google contests

dc2000 — 2004-07-19T05:28:39+00:00

Google is infatuated with e. Covered by CNet, and answered in c.

Journal Topic: 'User Journal' or 'use Perl' ?

dc2000 — 2003-05-06T05:53:42+00:00

The previous post was set
Journal Topic= 'User Journal', not
Journal Topic = 'use Perl'.

See what difference it made ?

apple music

dc2000 — 2003-05-06T05:39:33+00:00

The automated banging on Apple Music Store's playlists (a
$400 iPod can store $7500 of music), not to mention
free samples will be the story of 2004.

E.g., what do I know about RadioHead ?

More fun than SARS.

Perl: a small and orthogonal set of features

dc2000 — 2003-01-09T00:19:14+00:00

Teachable languages should provide a small and orthogonal set of features.
Perl's grade: D

If you just ignored 80 % of Perl's fetures, perhaps you could grade it higher.
At least on this criterion.

find docs evolving

dc2000 — 2002-09-18T21:14:25+00:00

The File::Find docs said:

use File::Find; find(\&wanted, '/foo','/bar'); sub wanted { ... }

The number of times I have found code which is meant to search one directory but
includes a bogus second dir argument is astonishing.

Likewise, I've encountered instances of multiple invocations of File::Find to search
more than two directories.

find(\&wanted, '/foo','/bar'); find(\&wanted, '/foo2','/bar2');
When I've been able to ask the author why they appended a second dir argument,
or limited themselves at two dir arguments, they've proudly pointed to their due diligence
of RTFMing the standard docs SYNOPSIS which show File::Find used with
two and only two directory arguments.

So I am pleased that the v5.8.0 docs for File::Find show a more generic:

use File::Find; find(\&wanted, @directories_to_seach); sub wanted { ... }

browse.cpan.org

dc2000 — 2002-08-30T21:35:50+00:00

I'm contemplating a browse.cpan.org. Current thoughts include

a Wiki-ish Slashodot-ish solicitation of
I'm looking at this, and it looks like that,
and moderating up/down the submitted links by saliency.
Crawling CPAN, much like the current state of the art.
1. Just mimic the file system on CPAN.
2. Mine the source for use or require.
3. Mine the docs for prerequisites;
4. Mine the PODs for see also.

Some background reading:

Bates' Berrypicking metaphor, and more accessible "ontology" fallacy: reviewed.

A good analogy is to say that faceted
classification is to hierarchical classification
as relational databases are to hierarchical
databases. Most system designers would not dream
of using hierarchical files these days, so why
are hierarchical classifications of information
content still being used.

Ontology Development 101 at The Farm.
Most helpfully, The Semantic Web: Taxonomies vs. ontologies.

browse.cpan.org should be easier to invent than a system for
browsing underwater videos looking for schools of fish or for
inferring visual saliency by tracking eye movements [Nature.com, .PDF]

Or perhaps search by keyword is the dominant findability technique,
and browse related is for the birds.

philosophy of information : programmer -- ornithology : bird

ps I'm not affiliated with LinuxNow
( CPAN Listings: The Browse Feature is currently being upgraded.
Please use the search feature in the mean time.)

google site perldoc

dc2000 — 2002-08-13T22:30:08+00:00

The helpful perldoc.com's search has been broken for a while;
looks like Carlos is too busy getting married.

Fortunately a Google site-specific search works well, and the
new v5.8.0 docs were posted to perldoc.com.

Minor nit: Google's dictionary lookup of searchword link is not
generated for site-specific searches, so the general search
underlines but the site-specific search doesn't underline virii.

remembering PEGS: Data variable value diagrams

dc2000 — 2002-07-29T21:59:10+00:00

PErl Graphical Structures (PEGS) are a nice technique for illustrating
data relationships, which I first saw in Hall and Schwartz's
Effective Perl -- The Shiny Ball Book : Table of Contents with chapter .PDFs.

They're great for enumerating the data types used, and if initialized, for showing
variables and their values; PEGS are also good for depicting references.

I haven't seen them adopted elsewhere recently, except for daveorg's Munging book.

Must have taken a lot of time with Framemaker.

last chance: Activestate Awards

dc2000 — 2002-07-16T20:04:45+00:00

Last chance to vote on Activestate Awards.

And thanks to Activestate for fixed their voting:

To: website-feedback@activestate.com Subject: ActiveState "Programmers' Choice Awards". Is there a way I can vote for the perl award, but not vote for the tcl award ? Add an abstain option under the nominees or something. I don't want to suggest that the Tcl nominees are all unworthy by adding a 'none of the above' voting option, but simply decline to vote on Tcl. Thanks, David W. Crawford dc@omor.com