Re: ping Purl Gurl? Beginner Level Perl

In article <SrKdnf6HMKOeQQfbnZ2dnUVZ_uygnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Purl Gurl <purlgurl@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
blmblm wrote:

Purl Gurl wrote:
blmblm wrote:
Purl Gurl wrote:
blmblm wrote:

select STDOUT;$|=1;

[ snip ]

Ok, perl core buffering. This can be a big deal.

Core has built in buffers for both reading and writing.
You have experienced one of the system specific problems
with perl core buffering.

This is a good short one page article on perl core buffering,

http://perl.plover.com/FAQs/Buffering.html

"One page"? Oh, one Web page. Twenty screenfuls here.

Upon reading this, you will understand immediately what processes are
taking place and why "sometimes" buffering is a problem. You really should
read the page; short, quick and easy to understand. This will only take
you about five minutes and you will enjoy a wealth of knowledge.

Well, I did try to read the whole article with some attention,
even though most of it was quite familiar to me. I can't
tell whether you really think I'm almost completely clueless
about basics in my field, or there's something else going on.

The article does make a good point about interactions between
Perl's buffering of text written to STDOUT and what happens
when you invoke, with "system", a command that writes to
standard output. So I did learn something, though it's not
anything I couldn't have reasoned out for myself based on
what I know about how software works.

[ snip ]

This is the problem with Perl man pages and Perl in general.

Perl lacks professional leadership. Perl, today, is truly a
hodge-podge effort of hundreds of people, with most of those
people being very egotistical and not such great thinkers.
Larry Wall has maintained some control over perl core but very
little control over documentation. A result is the man pages,
FAQ documents and other writings, are scatterbrained. Documents
were once so bad, a lot of documentation amounted to nothing
more than tirades about how bad Windows is as an operating system.

As best I can tell, this is a problem with free / open-source
software in general: There are more people willing (and sometimes
able) to work on code than there are people willing and able to
work on documentation. This is a potentially huge topic, which
i won't address here. Just pointing out flaws can be a help.
If you're doing that, good for you.

A recent effort is made to clean up man pages and documentation,
I think or would like to think partially a result of my constant
harping about the idiocy of the old documents. Today's versions
are much better but are still biased in many ways, not so much
about Windows rather constant pressure to use modules rather
than write code. Much of the documentation, rather then explaining
how something "works" refers readers to simply using a module.

Should you ever become seriously involved in the Perl community,
you will discover very few of the gods of Perl know how to write
code but sure do know how to "copy and paste" syntax for modules.
You will discover there are very few true programmers and almost
all are simply plug-n-play babies.

A spin-off is those writing documentation do not well know how
perl core operates and to cover, will simply suggest a module.
You discover a solution but do not discover an explanation.

We may have to agree to disagree here. When to reinvent
the wheel, and when to use an already-invented wheel, is
one of those judgment calls we all make in writing code.
Sometimes one makes sense, sometimes the other.

Here is an example from my experience in teaching intermediate
programming using Java: I have the students write their
own code to create and manipulate a particular type of data
structure (a linked list). I think it's pedagogically useful,
maybe even vital, for them to do this once, but I also tell
them that under most circumstances it makes more sense to
use one of Java's many library classes. My thinking is that
they all need to understand how things work at a low level
(as low as we can reasonably get), but they also need to be
able to make use of stuff written by other people, and they
need to know when to do one and when the other.

[ snip ]

Yeah, my choice of operating system is that simple. Windows
offers the programs I need, *nix type machines do not.

Much of this is simply marketing. Windows is the most popular
system and commands the market. About 90 percent of operating
systems out there, Windows. Logical then, 90 percent of software
is written for Windows.

There really is not much of a choice. Use Windows or do not use
the most available software. For me, the most critical software,
as mentioned, is my live stock market feed. This is a must. You
can only enjoy this on a Windows machine. No choice on this.

I would rather make money like Bill Gates than be a cool Penguin.

Your choice. I don't think it's a good thing to turn over
control of most of the world's computers to a company that
might not have everyone's best interests in mind. I don't
have the time and energy to mount much resistance, but I try
to do what I can. We all pick our battles.

[ snip ]

I'm not sure about chronology here, but it could well be that
your early exposure to computers and mine was happening at
about the same time, but in very different worlds: I started
out on mainframes -- a couple of undergraduate courses in the
1970s, six years with IBM-and-compatible mainframes, five
years with various minicomputers, then mostly Unix in grad
school. Probably a fairly typical career path for someone
my age, except for graduate school fairly late in life.


You are a little older than I am.

HA! HA! HA! * rolling on the floor laughing * MUHAHAHAHA!
snicker giggle cranky old gray haired woman! MEOOOOOOW!

Possible, but unlikely (that I'm older). My guess based on
other clues is you're maybe five or ten years older than I am.
It doesn't matter much to me except as a way of establishing
context.

Thank God for Lady Clairol, Retin-A and Wonderlift bras.

Ahem, well, yes, our experiences are much the same. We both
became involved with computers during the,

"Golden Age of Dinosaur Computers"

You and I are also dinosaurs on the verge of becoming fossils,
old bones for paleontologists to dig up in few decades. We are
the extinct Monitorsaurus.rex of modern day computer technology.

Well, except that your experience seems to have been with the
small denizens of that world, while mine was with the big ones.
I think that's a significant difference. Two of my favorite
stories about my early exposure to PCs are called

"How I Discovered the Difference between DOS and a Real
Operating System"

and

"How I Discovered the Difference between Windows and a Real
Operating System"

I'm pretty sure I told both of them in alt.folklore.computers
a while back and will dig up reference in the unlikely event
that anyone's interested.

Should I mention also that my first personal encounter with a
commercial ISP was only a couple of years ago? Prior to that,
my connection from home to the Internet was by dial-up to an
employer's system.

[ snip ]

There marks "The Road Not Taken" in our career choices. You picked
a technological field which has earned you a good living and is
very sensible.

What, you think I planned this? Yeah, maybe, in the sense that
shortly after finishing my undergraduate degree(s) I fell into
a field where I could make a living doing something I liked
and had some aptitude for, and more or less stuck with it.
Compared to some people's lives, mine has been pretty linear;
compared to others, not so much.

[ snip ]

At least we have a common interest we can discuss without scratching
each others eyes out. We are much the same in our lives. If there is
a difference, this is you are sane and I am insane. Other than this,
there is not much difference between us.

Compared to the difference between a human and a hypothetical (?)
Little Green Person From Outer Space, yeah, not much difference.

As for my being sane, I don't know. Remember, Usenet is that
place where crazy people go to post messages to ("at"?) each
other.

--
Decline To State
(But the e-mail address in the header should work.)
.

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