Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Free Online Perl Workshop

Posted by timothy on from the emailware dept.

signlink writes "A new online workshop starts today, March 30th, and the first topic is posted. We are running a free perl workshop which will take place over the next ten weeks at http://linux.biondosmith.com . Although free, registration is required - you need to use a valid email address. This will be an interactive online workshop - we will learn to install, read and modify freeware cgi-scripts, and using the skills this teaches us we will write our own. Emphasis will be on the reusability of code, and the course will complete a class project - we will write a form-mail program that executes some user-validation features."

13 comments

  1. Argh. Matt Wright. Argh. by merlyn · · Score: 2, Informative
    From their opening page:
    We will start off the week installing a perl script from Matt Wright's script archive.
    Argh. Haven't they heard of the CERT warnings against those scripts? Haven't they heard that Matt himself has denounced his programs in favor of the NMS project?

    How do people get so clueless, and yet have such a strong desire to share what they (don't) know?

    --
  2. registration by larry+bagina · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Although free, registration is required - you need to use a valid email address.

    Why exactly is that? I don't seea P3P policy covering the use of harvested email addresses.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  3. My response to the fairly rude comment by biondosmith · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is obvious that Randall is a talented programmer, and that he DID actually skim the workshop before proceeding to flame me, but I don't understand why he had to do so in such a negative way.

    He even posted his own "code hack" on my website to show that he could do things better than Matt Wright. But I did have a good reason for using this particular Matt Wright script. (This isn't formmail, or wwwboard - both of these scripts are full of holes and are regularly targeted by script kiddies.) I used a cookie script from Matt's archive because it is well documented, neatly written and contains code that I can re-use and build. I will also contrast Matt's use of a library later when I build a .pm that does the same thing.

    Randall is a perl guru - I am not. But I do know some perl, I am a pretty good teacher - and yes, I want to share the knowledge that I have. I am not interested in portraying myself as a perl-god, I simply find it helpful (helpful to me and helpful to others) by conducting these workshops. It is a nice way to meet other web designers. I would have appreciated help if any were offered in a constructive way. This is only heckling. It isn't helpful, it only serves to inflate Randall's image of himself (see his hacking escapades on his website - this guy loves himself).

    Matt
    PS - I ask for real email addresses as a way of keeping things honest - (Response to second question). I am giving people access to post information and upload files.
    1. Re:My response to the fairly rude comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If that's the 'http cookie library', then while it is heavily
      commented and neatly laid out, it's actually bad Perl. It's
      even broken in its acceptance of domain names (something that
      just leapt out at me).

      Compare and contrast with the HTTP::Cookies and CGI::Cookie
      modules on CPAN (one for use with lwp, the other with CGI).
      Both actively maintained and used widely.

      I'd strongly recommend abandoning any use of Matt's programs
      and instead either come up with your own, or find something
      that is actually well written. If you visit perlmonks.org you
      should find lots of people able to recommend good modules and
      programs to you.

      All else fails? Use Randal's book =)

    2. Re:My response to the fairly rude comment by Schwern · · Score: 1

      I, too, would rather see you use the NMS versions. It hurts the back of my eyeballs to see anyone teaching using Matt's code in 2003. Why? Well, just ask Matt Wright:

      from http://www.scriptarchive.com/nms.html

      While the free code found at my web site has not evolved much in recent years, the general programming practices and standards of CGI programs have. nms is an attempt by very active programmers in the Perl community to bring the quality of code for these types of programs up to date and eliminate some of the bad programming practices and bugs found in the existing Matt's Script Archive code.

      I would highly recommend downloading the nms versions if you wish to learn CGI programming. The code you find at Matt's Script Archive is not representative of how even I would code these days. My interests and activies have moved on, however, and I just have not found the time to update all of my scripts. One of the major reasons for this is that they work for many people. For this reason, I will continue to provide them to the public, but am also pleased to make you aware of well-coded alternatives.

      The NMS versions don't have the comments explaining what each line is doing, first year CS student style, but it is better to teach with good code than well-commented bad code. In the end, you can't replace good teaching with lots of comments.

      If the comments are the only thing holding you back from using NMS, add them in!

      Please don't use MSA code to teach with.

    3. Re:My response to the fairly rude comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Well, somebody had to take up the slack when Christiansen left!

    4. Re:My response to the fairly rude comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL! It's funny you said that. I never met him or communicated with him in any way but my employee met him when he was on his honey moon to Alaska. It was a Perl Whirl cruise I believe on the same ship. He said that Tom was an "insufferable prick"

  4. hardly a plug, but... by b17bmbr · · Score: 1, Redundant

    just buy the book CGI programming with Perl. you'll get more than a few scripts that you can rework. it'll give you a detailed overview and plenty of code. from the description, it sounds rather like a get together and a "let's do perl" rather than a guy who is a serious perl hacker. personally, dude deserved an ass rippin from randall. besides, what i've discovered from perl hackers is this: if you ask them, they will offer all the help they can, but if you pretend you know, they will unleash. i've been at perl a few years. i can do alot of things, specifically because of perl.

    perl is something you can teach yourself, for the most part. however, you have to go to the right sources.

    --
    My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
    1. Re:hardly a plug, but... by bdsesq · · Score: 1

      Yes you can just learn perl from a book. But some of us need motivation.

      Signing up for a class gives you a schedule to keep, people to work with and compete with. This works better for a lot of us.

      I can read the book and learn things too. But I attend classes because it get me out of the office and forces me to spend the time learning insead of dealing with whatever today's crisis is.

      Then I go home after class, connect to the office and fix the crisis. But at least I spent time learning something new.

    2. Re:hardly a plug, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or, even better, buy Learning Perl, Elements of Programming with Perl, Perl for Web Site Management, or any of the numerous decent perl books that have been published in the past year or two. It's scary how many people will try to learn from old books that haven't been updated.

      And, most importantly, don't just get a "X and Perl" or "Perl and X" book. Learn the language, then learn some of the niches. "Computer Science & Perl Programming" and "Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk" are two recent O'reilly titles that show a variety of interesting things one can do with Perl. Don't just limit yourself to one little corner.

      The best thing to do, no matter what else, is to get involved in the perl community. Contribute to CPAN; hang out on #perls on irc; play with perlmonks.org; browse comp.lang.perl.* on usenet; join mailing lists. etc. The language is just a focal point to help get to know more people.

    3. Re:hardly a plug, but... by babbage · · Score: 1
      What's so bad about CGI Programming with Perl, 2nd ed? It came out in 2000, four years after the first edition, and covers, in no particular order:
      • CGI.pm
      • templates (including HTML::Template and Mason
      • Javascript
      • security issues (taint mode, use strict, use warnings, etc)
      • email
      • persistence (from text & DBM files to DBI & SQL)
      • XML
      • dynamic image generation
      • debugging & architecture issues

      My only gripes are that mod_perl is given short shrift (a chapter on getting standard CGI scripts to work under Apache::Registry would have been nice), and that coverage of templates could have been fleshed out a bit more (I like HTML::Template, but both Mason & Template Toolkit seem to be more popular -- and Mason gets little more than a mention while T::T really wasn't mentioned at all). An XML-RPC / SOAP section might have been nice too, but that really is pretty recent.

      The book is still an excellent, competent overview of the topic though. Books written this well don't age badly, and while the books you list are also good ones, for someone trying to learn CGI it makes more sense to me to recommend a CGI specific book. Given the choice between this book and, say, Matt Wright's code, there's simply no question which is better.

      --
      DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
    4. Re:hardly a plug, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nothing _wrong_ with it as such. Just that ideally one should learn Perl before applying it to such a particular area.

      Ideally, someone learning CGI will learn CGI. At an earlier point they should have learned some language with which they can write programs to interface with CGI.

      As for some of your gripes: if someone wants to use mod_perl, they should get a mod_perl book (such as "Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C", or "Practical mod_perl", or "mod_perl Developer's Cookbook"). If someone wants to use Mason ("Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason") or TT (no book that I'm aware of, although iirc it was semi-covered in a chapter of some generic book; might've been the Manning "Web Development with Apache and Perl"), then hopefully they'll be either doing static site generation or be using mod_perl (or FastCGI [and use of FastCGI and Mason is covered in the Mason book, which is also available online free]). XML-RPC and SOAP are completely irrelevant to the topic (and are superbly covered by "Programming Web Services with Perl", and Perl and X are additionally covered in "Programming Web Services with X" where X is either of the two protocols). REST is more relevant, in the sense of choosing well named URLs.

      If a book is about CGI, then it should, ideally, be about CGI. Otherwise it would be called "Web Programming with Perl" (and would then have to also include stuff on LWP, thus encroaching on "Perl & LWP" [another fine book]).

      So, while it's an overview of the topic, which is great, that doesn't make it a good thing to learn Perl from. TBH, there's not much that is specific to CGI programming. You get a bunch of environment variables, you get some stuff on stdin sometime, you chuck stuff out to stdout. You have a normal program in the middle. It's nothing special. The most I'll concede is that authors need to be aware of the security stuff and to be beaten over the head "use CGI.pm" "use CGI.pm" etc.