G+_Joe C. Hecht Posted April 1, 2014 Share Posted April 1, 2014 Review: TWiT's Coding 101 - Episode 10 Randal Schwartz's "Perls of Wisdom" I must admit, I was pretty excited about the prospects of a Coding 101 episode featuring Randal Schwartz. Afterall, Randal is a well known, long standing major contributor to the Perl community, and certainly has a lot of experience to bring to the table and share with our group of new and old coders alike. First, let me say that the video quality was horrible. Watching the episode on a 120 inch screen provided more sunlight streaming in from behind Randal than I have seen since my last trip to the beach. With Padre S.J.'s constant put-downs of the unprofessional quality of coding videos found elsewhere (such as you tube), I think the pot got caught calling the kettle black on this one. Since Randal has a weekly TWiT offering (Floss Weekly), I think Randal deserves the same treatment from the TWiT gaffer (Chief Lighting Technician) that Tom Merritt once received. As far as the episode's contents, I was very disappointed that this great opportunity for our new (and old) coders to absorb some real knowledge, and for the Perl language and community to benefit from an influx of new TWiT coders seemed largely wasted on promotion and reminisce. There were few real pointers to any of the great assets the Perl community has to offer, and few words of encouragement to be had. As a side note, if anyone is interested in seeing truly "shameless self promotion" done right, please visit my very first YouTube video "Who is TJoe?" at: To round things out, let me say that Perl is an excellent and easy language to learn, and there is a wealth of resources available to both the beginner and expert alike. In my (not so humble) opinion, Perl runs the web, and there are few things you cannot (easily) do in Perl. Perl probably has more available add on libraries than all other languages combined (over 131,000 and counting). While Perl is not really a good choice for making "Windowed" applications, it simply rocks for creating command line applications, utilities, and is second to none for writing code that runs on a web server. Perl is cross platform, meaning that most of the code you write will run on any kind of machine. With a little tweaking of your code, it is even possible to write Perl code that can be compiled in C! Perl is truly an amazing language, sporting a huge community of (mostly friendly) followers that are more than willing to help out both beginners and experts alike with their questions, and are often a bit "less harsh" on the newbie than some other coding communities. If you are running on a Mac or Linux, Perl is already installed and available on your machine, and is as close as your nearest terminal window. You will need a script to execute, and you will need to set the executable rights on the script file prior to running it (run your script from the command prompt in the terminal, not from the file browser). See the Wikipedia entry link at the end of this post for a code example to get you started. If you are running Windows, you probably will need to install a version of Perl (and there are many to choose from). I can recommend the free ActiveState Perl community edition as being easy to install, is available on several other platforms as well, and can even be compiled (using the not so free Perl Dev Kit). Perl is even available for your Android device, where it is very easy to make your own apps for your SmartPhone or Tablet, complete with a user interface! If you are installing Perl, you are probably going to want to setup a webserver (if you do not already have one), as there are some really cool web related things you can (easily) do with Perl. Apache has some great server offerings, that can also set you up with Perl. It is a good idea to setup Perl after you setup your web server, as the installer may be able to configure your web server to make use Perl I have included links to the resources at the bottom of this post. Finally, before I go, let me say that I am very much looking forward to the "new season" of Coding 101, in hopes that it brings some real content to this show. Recounting, in TEN EPISODES, we have been told to "download it", "break it", and have barely covered the concept of a "while Loop", much less anything else. Anyone that actually got anywhere at "coding 101" should congratulate themselves, as it was at their own doing. The show's hosts have been missing in action from this group for some time, and the show flopped so badly, that even the show's owner (Leo Laporte) recently (and publicly) refused to plug the show during a live broadcast. With TEN EPISODES behind them, the results from Padre SJ's claims of "we are doing something different" can now be measured, and have amounted to little more than "we are going to sell advertising". Claims that "you are going to learn all about" fell short, and claims that "we can only do so much in "30 minutes" seem to be excuses that are about to be proven to be nothing more than the "horse hockey" that it is. OK, to be fair, it is not easy to produce a quality show. I say this after making my own entry into that "unprofessional YouTube videos with the horrible audio and video" that the Padre often refers to. My first lesson (episode zero) barely covers the basic subject of "What is code", and in working on episode one (bits, bytes, variables, and types), has shown me just how tough it can be... however, I do believe all of the the subjects to date can be clearly presented in a few short 5 minute segments, and given a bit of time, I do intend to deliver. If you are interested in a "from the ground up" approach to Coding 101, and really want to learn the material, please feel free to subscribe to my little channel (there is more coming, I promise): http://www.youtube.com/user/Code4Sale Or, if you are just starting out, check out my pathetic little first episode "what is code" at: http://youtu.be/zuSURp3N-0g OK, here are the great resources I promised, to help get you started with Perl: Wikipedia Entry (see the code at bottom): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl ActiveState Perl: http://www.activestate.com/activeperl Strawberry Perl: http://strawberryperl.com/ Apache Mod Perl: https://perl.apache.org/ Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (lots of libraries to do almost anything you could ever dream of): http://www.cpan.org/ Perl Org: http://www.perl.org/ Android Scripting Layer (add Perl to your phone or tablet): https://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/ Sincerely, and with brutal honesty, TJoe - Code4Sale, LLC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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