2009/11/12 Eric Wilhelm <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:enobacon@gmail.com">enobacon@gmail.com</a>></span><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
# from Leo Lapworth<br><div class="im">
>Could I suggest that all <a href="http://learn.perl.org" target="_blank">learn.perl.org</a> documentation must run on:<br>
>5.8+? - <br>
<br>
</div>I have to disagree there.<br>
<br>
5.8.8 is almost 3 years old at this point. Debian *stable* (lenny)<br>
includes 5.10.0. </blockquote><div><br>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.<br>
<br>Is there anything in the tutorials which would be hard to make work on 5.8?<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
The new tutorials are going to be around for a while,<br>
and teaching new users to nurse legacy perl releases is not in the Perl<br>
community's best interest.<br></blockquote><div><br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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?<br>
<br>What do you think?<br><br>Cheers<br><br>Leo<br> <br></div><div><br><br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
An introduction to a modern programming language should not have to<br>
start with a history lesson.<br>
<br>
--Eric<br>
--<br>
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.<br>
--George Santayana<br>
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