Portal talk:Perl

I'm surely not the best "teacher" for Perl around here, but I would like to get the ball rolling. I went ahead and wrote a casual Introduction to Perl, including a link to Perl.org which I shall start a page about as a local resource for building the project and gathering materials.

If you wish to learn or teach Perl, make suggestions about organizing the topic, what to include or how to proceed, just jump on in here. Be sure to get yourself enrolled! CQ 20:16, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Programming:Perl at Wikibooks
Programming:Perl at Wikibooks looks like a fairly valient effort to build a reference for helping learn and teach perl. It was made by several contributors and has had reasonably recent activity. I'm not crazy about the way it flows, but it should definately be given some credence by this project. Perhaps we can import the Wikibook to Wikiversity and refactor it a bit. Please have a look and comment here.

Links to Perl docs at search.cpan.org
The references section had an apparent wish list of perl documentation. I made links to the references sections on search.cpan.org, which is a site that displays current CPAN modules and documentation.

I have not added all the docs that appear in "perldoc perl". I can after confirming this is what the topic participants would like to do. Ikluft 22:34, 21 July 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, that got no complaints. And I was even welcomed as a new user. :-)  I added the rest of the "perldoc perl" page links for Perl 5.8.8. Ikluft 11:39, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

CPAN modules for Wikiversity Perl training
Since part of the power of Perl is the breadth of classes available on CPAN, I had the idea to make CPAN modules named Wikiversity::Something for each lesson. An introductory lesson would have to start with building and installing CPAN modules. Then we start requiring our own Wikiversity-specific modules out of CPAN in order for students to run code samples or test exercises for successful results. This can be used as the foundation of all the Wikiversity Perl training. It provides the student with positive reinforcement that their code has met the requirements of an exercise. Ikluft 08:55, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I added the first page to use this idea at Perl Modules on CPAN. I uploaded to CPAN a corresponding Perl module Wikiversity::Hello for this lesson. Ikluft 12:46, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Adding a good Beginner's Book
I purchased the Camel Book to try to teach myself Perl (Programming Perl) and found it a little bit daunting and hard to access as a first-time Perl user/programmer. As such, I spent a lot of time trying to find better "First-Timer" Perl books and stumbled upon this one. So far its been the best book I've found regarding learning the basics of Perl. To the best of my knowledge it is an "open book" and can therefore be referenced and linked to without restriction. Nonetheless, I wanted to get some other folk's take on if it is appropriate to reference another author's work and, if so, where I should post the link to the pdf files or website. (Also, if this book already exists somewhere on wikiversity then I didn't want to double post it). Any thoughts regarding a reference materials section and this particular addition to it? BJ Covert Action 18:42, 16 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for telling me about that book. Simon Cozens's book looks excellent.


 * It is always appropriate to reference another author's relevant work, whether or not that work is "open". A person who does not reference the source of his information may be committing plagiarism, whether or not that source is "open". It is mandatory to have references, even when the work referenced is non-open and non-free, according to the Wikipedia:WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT guideline and Wikipedia:WP:SOURCEACCESS policy. I assume that Wikiversity guidelines and policies are similar.
 * Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the one who invented the World Wide Web) has a few things to say on whether it is "appropriate" to link to some other web site at "Links and Law: Myths".
 * I think the Wikiversity "Perl.org" resource looks like a good place to link to that book. Alternatively, or perhaps in addition, any page where you add information you got from that book, you could add a footnote to a "References" section at the bottom of the page, using the FAQ/Editing mechanism, perhaps in combination with Template:Reflist -- see Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Reflist for many examples.
 * Where is any page at the Wikiversity that suggests that it is ever inappropriate for me to reference or link to the source where I got my information? --DavidCary 20:02, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Code/Projects Database?
If there is one thing I have figured out over my years of programming its that you can't truly learn (or teach) a programming language without actually using the language extensively. One of the problems I've always had when learning a new language is trying to come up with different applications/routines/projects that I could program to help develop my skills. I wonder if it would be helpful to people learning Perl to have a projects or assignments database somewhere in the Perl category which just lists ideas for fun/cool/useful things that a new beginner could try to code up in Perl. Of course, there are various examples in most books, but there is nothing quite as fun and fulfilling as being given a task that says:

"Design a program that _____'s" and then having to figure it out for yourself.

Perhaps if we started posting project ideas we could start tagging them with labels like beginner, intermediate, and advanced? BJ Covert Action 18:48, 16 January 2009 (UTC)