[lug] The list

[Walter Pienciak]

On 20 Sep 2000, Tkil wrote:

> >>>>> "ljp" == ljp  <ljp at llornkcor.com> writes:
> 
> ljp> If you want abuse of newbie Q's, go to comp.lang.perl
> 
> please note that usually it's only certain people who are that rough
> with newbies.  the fact that at least one of these people has
> substantial "name recognition" sometimes causes others to believe that
> this is generally approved by the perl community, when in fact it is
> not.
> 
> i don't know if he still posts regularly, but tom phoenix ("rootbeer")
> is unfailingly polite and helpful.  other big names who are usually
> nice are Guru Sarathy and Chip Salzenberg.  Randal Schwartz and Joe
> Hall can be a bit terse, but they rarely insult people.
> 
> if you do want to ask a question in any of the perl forums (fora?),
> note that they tend to respond better to questions asking where to
> find more information or examples, as opposed to "how do i do <blah>".
> something like "i'm trying to do XYZ, i thought i could use 'foo' and
> 'bar', and i read perlthud and perlsplat, but it still didn't explain
> things" would be taken pretty well, i suspect.  it's when they're
> asked to parrot documentation and/or provide basic programming
> instruction that they tend to get cantankerous.
> 
> but you are certainly correct that there are some toxic personalities
> in the perl community.  they were enough to make me effectively remove
> myself from it.  before i did that, though, i did write up a guide to
> surviving and thriving on the EFNet IRC #perl channel:
> 
>    http://slinky.scrye.com/~tkil/perl/pound-perl.html
> 
> happy hacking,
> t.

All good advice.  And there's the local Perl group, Boulder.pm,
which exists mainly as a mailing list consisting of helpful people
asking and answering each other's questions.  I'm not aware of any
toxic personalities on the list.

You can subscribe by sending an e-mail to majordomo at hfb.pm.org with
the message

    subscribe boulder-pm-list

And www.perlmonks.org has gotten pretty good lately, too.

Walter