[Perl-org-patches] Target audience / platforms for learn.perl.org

[Leo Lapworth]

2009/11/12 Eric Wilhelm <enobacon at gmail.com>

> # from Leo Lapworth
> >Could I suggest that all learn.perl.org documentation must run on:
> >5.8+? -
>
> I have to disagree there.
>
> 5.8.8 is almost 3 years old at this point.  Debian *stable* (lenny)
> includes 5.10.0.


That's great - if they have Debian lenny installed, but if your on a pre
intel mac, even with the latest OSX (10.4 Leopard) your only ever going to
have 5.8.8 by default as new OSX's (e.g Snow Leopard) are Intel only. This
is just one example I know about, I'm sure there are others.

Is there anything in the tutorials which would be hard to make work on 5.8?

The new tutorials are going to be around for a while,
> and teaching new users to nurse legacy perl releases is not in the Perl
> community's best interest.
>

Sure, but if someone is starting to learn in a work environment which (like
mine) is not planning to upgrade any time soon because of legacy systems it
doesn't help putting someone off reading the tutorial and learning Perl
because they think they have to have 5.10 which they're not allowed to
install. This also counts for newbies who have access to a web hosted
environment which they can not control.

Installing a new Perl isn't easy to get right (I have NEVER had to use
anything other than the default Perl in any OS), it's better than it used to
be, but why put up a hurdle at the start of a learning path? This isn't to
say that there aren't good reasons to install a new/non-system Perl and
having a tutorial on it would be great, explaining local libs etc, but
that's for those newbies who want to, it should not stop others from
learning the language.

I agree we want to encourage people to be using the latest Perl, but forcing
them to at the start of their learning process isn't going to enamour them
to using Perl. We are aiming at newbies, we want to get them learning and
enjoying Perl as quickly as possible, in the safest way possible.

My suggestion of 5.8 was because of Unicode otherwise I'd suggest tutorials
supporting even earlier code (for learning, but with a big message about
using something more modern where possible), is there any feature of 5.10
that is really going to make a difference to someone starting out or the
tutorials?

What do you think?

Cheers

Leo





>
> An introduction to a modern programming language should not have to
> start with a history lesson.
>
> --Eric
> --
> Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
> --George Santayana
> ---------------------------------------------------
>    http://scratchcomputing.com
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Perl-org-patches mailing list
> Perl-org-patches at lists.scsys.co.uk
> http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/perl-org-patches
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/pipermail/perl-org-patches/attachments/200911=
14/eb5b96ff/attachment.html