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Reply to the guru99 guy who wanted me to link to him from my blog
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Hey, | |
I was poking around today and came across your article: http://strangelyconsistent.org/blog/how-perl-6-could-kill-us-all | |
I noticed that you mentioned Perl Tutorials (http://perl6.org/) on the page. I also love that tutorial. | |
In fact, it inspired us to create a more thorough and actionable version also updated for 2015: http://www.guru99.com/perl-tutorials.html | |
I’d be tickled pink if you’d consider adding it to your page. | |
Cheers, | |
Alex | |
Co-Founder of Guru99 |
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Alex, | |
Now and then people write me to ask if I want to link to their | |
(commercial) site on my blog. I always end up telling them no, | |
politely, because no-one has yet made the offer in such a way that I | |
think the benefits would outweigh the annoyance for me and for my | |
readers. | |
Your request makes me want to not just decline, but also explain why, | |
even if I knew you from before and wanted to do you a favor, I would | |
still not link to your course. | |
First, your email is very poorly researched. I'm proud of the article | |
you link to, <http://strangelyconsistent.org/blog/how-perl-6-could-kill-us-all>, | |
but it's not clear to me that you've read it or care about its | |
contents. You say that I mention "Perl Tutorials" on the page, by | |
which you mean <http://perl6.org/>. Again, this makes it seem like you | |
didn't read the post, but rather had some script scan it or something. | |
A poor start. | |
When you ask me to add a link of yours to your page, you're asking me | |
to link to your site for free so that your company will get better | |
rankings. That's what it is. My sympathy for you dropped further when | |
I quickly found out that you've similarly emailed other Perl people | |
with the same question. You're spamming me and my colleagues for | |
Google juice. | |
Let's consider the contents of the course you want me to link to. I | |
can't hope to be thorough, because there's just so much that's wrong | |
with it. | |
* It's not edited or spell-checked. One of the first headings reads | |
"What should i know?". This leaves a bad impression right from the | |
start. If English is not your native language, having it checked by a | |
professional is especially important. | |
* Of the 27 occurrences of the word "Perl" on the page you linked, 16 | |
are spelled "PERL" in all-caps. The fact that you don't know what it | |
means when someone spells the language in all-caps tells me that you | |
don't know all that much about Perl. The fact that you're *mixing* the | |
two again tells me you haven't done a very good job editing the page. | |
Perhaps it has several authors. Or perhaps it has one author who just | |
doesn't care so much. | |
* All the graphics look like something straight out of a soulless | |
clip-art gallery. It doesn't look good. I mean, seriously: | |
<http://cdn.guru99.com/images/2013/07/071913_0537_Arrays2.png> | |
* You do mention 'use strict', but then you practically never use it | |
in your examples. It's like you think that it's still OK to write | |
professional Perl code without 'use strict'. Or maybe you simply don't | |
have all that much experience with medium to large code bases where | |
'use strict' is a natural and obvious choice. Either way, you can't | |
call it "updated for 2015" if you're not taking 'use strict' | |
seriously. | |
* There's no mention of 'use warnings'. | |
* Your treatment of hash keys is not idiomatic, and seems unaware of | |
auto-quoting for hash keys in Perl. | |
* "Foreach statement can be used in the same way as for, the main | |
difference is we don't have any condition check and incrementing in | |
this." No, there is no difference between the `for` and `foreach` | |
keywords. Your treatment on loops is very shallow and leaves much to | |
be desired. It makes me think you haven't read | |
<http://perldoc.perl.org/perlsyn.html>, which is far more informative. | |
* When you explain operators, you completely ignore the difference in | |
precedence between `||` and `or`, and between `&&` and `and`. Again, | |
this treatment is very shallow, doesn't highlight the important facts, | |
and reads mostly like a table of stuff. Neither informative or | |
inspiring. | |
* Your use of `open` is called the "two-argument open", and it's | |
highly discouraged since several years back for security reasons. | |
Recommending this form of `open` to people is irresponsible. | |
* Your section about object-oriented Perl doesn't even mention Moose, | |
the module which has revolutionized Perl object-orientation in the | |
past 10 years. Again, there's no way you can call this "updated for | |
2015". It's not even updated for 2005. | |
* "Destructor of an object is by default called at the end and before | |
your script exits. This is used to destroy your objects from memory." | |
You don't explain the syntax of a destructor, and your explanation of | |
when a destructor gets called is factually wrong in two ways (it can | |
be called before that, and it may not be called at all). It has | |
nothing to do with memory (and all to do with cleanup). Basically, | |
those sentences contain negative information for the reader, who is | |
now stupider for having read it. | |
* The site is full of ads. Your own ads. It distracts from the content | |
of the course and tells me you're not really all that interested in | |
teaching, you're interested in ads. There are too many ads on the | |
page. They make the page look ugly. | |
In my dayjob, I teach. I once reviewed a Perl course that someone else | |
had written, to find out if we could teach it. The course was | |
extremely bad, and we ended up replacing it with our own, original | |
content. There just wasn't anything good in there to salvage. But your | |
course is worse than that. It now replaces that course as the worst | |
Perl course I've ever seen. | |
I hope this explains clearly why I would never link to your page. I | |
would be "tickled pink" if you fixed all the wrong things above, but | |
I'm not holding my breath. Even if you do, I'm still not providing a | |
link to your company. | |
I would recommend learning Perl before writing a course like this. A | |
good starting point, which is also free, is | |
<http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/>. This book actually contains | |
useful advice, good copy, and explanations based on experience, unlike | |
your course. | |
The Internet is a big place, and asking a stranger to link to you | |
means you should at least have something worth linking to. In my | |
opinion, you don't. I hope this reply has helped explain why not. | |
Again, I am not holding my breath. | |
Cheers, | |
Carl | |
Teacher, consultant, blogger, Perl 6 core developer |
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