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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."

8 of 13 comments (clear)

  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 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.

    2. 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. 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 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