[epo-core] new aims/membershgip section for site, proposed

[Mike Whitaker]

>>> - Eliciting the creation and/or improvement of tutorials,
>>> screencasts, and other accessible documentation to make it easier
>>> for new users to get started with modern perl
>>
>> Is it worth specifying reference documentation, books and training
>> courses in that list?
>
> Maybe. Thoughts, everybody?

The problem with books is there aren't many. Partly because of the  
lead time on books (compared to the speed the likes of Moose is  
evolving), partly because the major book publishers seem to be easing  
off on Perl, and partly because, I guess, the 'notable' Perl authors  
(as seen by the masses) aren't part of EP.

By way of example, and obviously picking the big one:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106/toc.html (5th Ed Learning  
Perl ToC) does not mention the word 'object'. The last NEW O'Reilly  
(rather than new editions of old standards) was Mastering Perl, and  
that was over a year ago - before that there was Perl Hacks (2006) and  
Intermediate Perl (which is a rename of the objects and references  
book), and then PBP and the Testing notebook (2005). There are NO  
upcoming Perl books on their site, and, IMO, like it or loathe it,  
that's where a book needs to be if possible.

As I think I've said before, this is an issue, because IMO a massive  
percentage of the folks we want to reach still learn from the Camel  
and Llama, think PBP is scary, wouldn't know how to write a unit test  
in Perl and are still blessing hashes by hand, or at best with several- 
year-old helper classes. Either that or they aren't using Perl any  
more because they think that's what Perl IS.

We need Enlightened Perl books, one way or another.
--
Mike Whitaker    | Perl developer, writer, guitarist, photographer
mike at altrion.org | Board member, http://www.enlightenedperl.org/
Y!: tuxservers   | Blog: http://perlent.blogspot.com/
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