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Reply to the guru99 guy who wanted me to link to him from my blog
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
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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