use Perl

• The only correct answer is (Score:1)

  by jk2addict (4946)

  42.
• I should make a 'greatest hits' (Score:2)

  by hfb (74)

  book of all the most frequently annoying questions and criticism of the CPAN and post it somewhere...not that it would ever get read, but at least I'd have cut and paste.

  Nobody ever asks why there are 15 different mustards to choose from in the grocery, so I'm never quite sure why people get fussy about the selection on CPAN unless a) they have a module that fits in a namespace they want but is already taken or b) think everyone elses' module is shite save for theirs. It's a free archive...pick and choo
  • Re: (Score:2)

    by djberg96 (2603)

    "Nobody ever asks why there are 15 different mustards to choose from in the grocery..."

    Agreed. That's why I'm going to take a cue from Shin Honda [cpan.org] and release File::STat, File::STAT, File::staT, and File::StaT tomorrow!

    Because, hey, variety is the spice of life.
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by Alias (5735)

    If you had watched the video, you'd have perhaps gotten my point.
    
    If you offer people 24 mustards to try from, lots of people will come and look, but not many will buy.
    
    If you offer people 6 mustards to try from, fewer people will come and look, but MORE people will buy.
    
    That is the critical point here.
    
    Where I'm curious about is IF this applies to CPAN modules.
    
    I'm not complaining that it does.
    
    I don't know anyone left related to CPAN, me included, that honestly thinks that only having one choice for a single to
  • CPAN and choice (Score:1)

    by pjf (2464)

    I should expose a few things up front. I run Perl Training Australia [perltraining.com.au], and my full-time job for the last five years has been teaching people how to use Perl. I've got a good idea what newcomers to the language like, and what they don't like.

    They don't like the CPAN. They absolutely adore it. One of the best parts of running an introductory course is letting our students play with the CPAN. It's very rare for a student not to find a module that directly helps them with their day-to-day work, with the
• Education, Tyranny, and Solutions (Score:1)

  by duff (16)

  It causes a problem for them, because students are trained to look for the one correct answer, so any university assignment featuring roman numerals causes much consternation.

  This is such a crime! What ever happened to critical thinking? If anything could sum up my dissatisfaction with the education systems I've been exposed to it's that they train people to put blinders on and find "the" answer. :-(
  
  You may be interested to know that there was a Scientific American article not too long ago entitled "The Ty
• Maypole vs Catalyst (Score:1)

  by slanning (5049)

  I'll leave the "too many choices" part alone, as I basically agree with hfb. :) Also there have been a couple threads on "separating the wheat from the chaff" on perlmonks recently, so it no longer interests me.

  But I do have to offer another suggestion for the relative success of Maypole and Catalyst. You claimed:

  Just look at Maypole, who could never have predicted that the ORM module they chose (Class::DBI) would so suddenly fall out of favourite with developers and suddenly turn Maypole from the cutti
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by naughton (4417)

    So my conclusion is that the choice of database abstraction layer has little to do with the popularity of Catalyst.

    I agree, but here you're refuting a point that Alias didn't make. He didn't say it made Catalyst more popular than Maypole. His point was that, because "Catalyst embraced choice and diversity", they were able to switch "their default choice [of ORM] ... with relatively little negative effect." That's just one example of how a certain amount of choice in building blocks can allow a frame
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Alias (5735)

      It's true that there was already some muttering on moving away from Maypole at the time, but it WAS still considered to be the dominant choice for web MVC.
      
      While it may have happened in any case that people moved away, having Class::DBI going boom most certainly accelerated the migration.
      
      From the point of view of someone not actively involved in the web MVC developments (since I have my own MVC framework) it was almost an overnight migration, much much faster than you would normally see.
      
      As for Catalyst vs Ji