I just remembered why I hate perl

[Cogman]

The Perl community is filled with a bunch of assholes. I asked a simple question "can this happen?".

Their response "OMG, you're so dumb, post your code",
so I post the code tell them exactly what I'm observing,
Their response "you should have newlines at the end of this function."
My response "No, the function automatically adds the newlines and besides, that is unrelated to the issue I'm having".
Their responses "OMG, you don't know that that is not the problem, your so dumb, I can't believe we ever stooped to your level to try an help you. You should post your logs"
I protested, I told them, "My logs are very long and they don't have a lot of useful information, please trust me when I say that this is what the output looks like."
Their response "Oh, we your so dumb, you didn't describe your situation well enough, you should post your logs."
My response, "Fine, here are the logs."

After that, they didn't say anything. Yes, it was a problem, no, they didn't know the solution to it... Gah, drives me nuts. They treat me like a 4 year old, insult me to no end, and in the end when I finally convince them that Yes, this is a possible problem, they don't say anything.

And yes, I still have the issue. The problem, I guess, is the fact that they generally don't work with very large perl projects, so they expect to have every single line of source code available to them to debug a problem (which simply isn't feasible". The functions weren't even all that abigously named, they were functions like "infoPrint", come one, why would you assume that does much more than printing. Yet they were bound and determined that was my problem (Even though I tried to explain to them that those were inserted by me to try and find the problem).

 

[TridenT]

Find a different forum?

 

[Cogman]

Find a different forum?

It was in a chat session which added to the frustration. I was looking for a quick "yes or no" answer to a question and got hounded and insulted all for nothing. I still don't know the answer to my question.

 

[jobz]

Try www.stackoverflow.com

 

[Ken g6]

Find a different forum?

Like this one?

The Perl community is filled with a bunch of assholes.

Well, insults aren't going to help with getting your problem solved.

The problem, I guess, is the fact that they generally don't work with very large perl projects

To be honest, I don't think Perl should be used in very large projects. It just doesn't scale as well as some other languages.

 

[Nothinman]

People can make anything look bad, and if someone posted a thread about how they hated C# because of MS you'd probably one of the first to tell them why that's stupid and how the language and community aren't the same thing.

 

[Cogman]

People can make anything look bad, and if someone posted a thread about how they hated C# because of MS you'd probably one of the first to tell them why that's stupid and how the language and community aren't the same thing.

Too true. I had just finished the situation and was a little upset about the whole thing. Thinking back on it, there were people there trying to legitimately help me, but the one that was being the least helpful and most insulting was the one that others would chime in and say "Yeah, you tell 'em so and so".

The attitude was "I don't know the answer, so it must be a stupid question." That bugged me a lot.

 

[Cogman]

Like this one?
Well, insults aren't going to help with getting your problem solved.

Yep, that was my rant about it. I don't like asking questions only to be berated for asking them. I'm pretty sure that this would have happened with just about any other community, I just was frustrated over the issue.

To be honest, I don't think Perl should be used in very large projects. It just doesn't scale as well as some other languages.

Well, where we are using it, it makes sense. We are currently using it to run tests on server firmware. The difficulties come in over the fact that we are only allowed to interact with the user interface (using the expect module.) There are TONS of tiny tests, so rather then have each of those test repeat common functionality (logining into the serves, running a command, etc) they've create a fairly large framework that does most of the interacting with the servers.

For writing test software like this, perl is really pretty awesome. Most of our operations have to do with string manipulation which perl does a great job at. (python might be able to do a better job, but this framework predates python's popularity)

 

[KIAman]

Cogman, you newb! Copy your exact perl thread, word for word and let us determine who the real assholes are! You've obviously said some expletive or racial remark to get them to respond in likeness! GRR!

 

[Cogman]

Cogman, you newb! Copy your exact perl thread, word for word and let us determine who the real assholes are! You've obviously said some expletive or racial remark to get them to respond in likeness! GRR!

lol, That is EXACTLY the tone that was in the chat room.

BTW, I did fix my problem. It wouldn't have been something they could have solved (without me posting the entire test system... yeah, that wasn't going to happen.)

 

[ObscureCaucasian]

I've never used Perl... Anytime I need to script anything I default to Python unless theres some reason why I can't.

 

[Aluvus]

lol, That is EXACTLY the tone that was in the chat room.

BTW, I did fix my problem. It wouldn't have been something they could have solved (without me posting the entire test system... yeah, that wasn't going to happen.)

So your complaint is that someone didn't think you were providing enough information to solve the problem... which in fact you were not?

 

[Cogman]

So your complaint is that someone didn't think you were providing enough information to solve the problem... which in fact you were not?

No, my complaint is that I asked a simple question "Is this possible in perl" and instead of getting a "yes or no", I got a "You're an idiot!" with no real answer and tons of shots in the dark that they INSISTED that I must do before they could proceed to try and help me (mingled with lots of insults.)

I posted a small snippet of code where the problem was occurring (And that WAS the code where the problem was occurring) because they harassed me for it. I let them know "This isn't the whole system, and I can't post the whole system because it is too large and a part of my work". Yet still they insulted, harassed, and insulted me.

All this without answering the original question.

Yes, the gist is they didn't have enough information. They could have easily let it go and said "Hey, we don't have enough information to help you" but rather they took the route of "Oh you're an idiot and you don't know what you are doing, you MUST post more code you idiot". There is a difference between "Sorry, we can't help you." and "You're a dumb ass, and we hate you"

 

[Aluvus]

No, my complaint is that I asked a simple question "Is this possible in perl" and instead of getting a "yes or no", I got a "You're an idiot!" with no real answer and tons of shots in the dark that they INSISTED that I must do before they could proceed to try and help me (mingled with lots of insults.)

I posted a small snippet of code where the problem was occurring (And that WAS the code where the problem was occurring) because they harassed me for it. I let them know "This isn't the whole system, and I can't post the whole system because it is too large and a part of my work". Yet still they insulted, harassed, and insulted me.

All this without answering the original question.

Yes, the gist is they didn't have enough information. They could have easily let it go and said "Hey, we don't have enough information to help you" but rather they took the route of "Oh you're an idiot and you don't know what you are doing, you MUST post more code you idiot". There is a difference between "Sorry, we can't help you." and "You're a dumb ass, and we hate you"

Well from your previous post:

Too true. I had just finished the situation and was a little upset about the whole thing. Thinking back on it, there were people there trying to legitimately help me, but the one that was being the least helpful and most insulting was the one that others would chime in and say "Yeah, you tell 'em so and so".

The attitude was "I don't know the answer, so it must be a stupid question." That bugged me a lot.

...it sounds like you are using the "singular they" in a rather misleading way.

From what I can tell, a more neutral description of your experience would be "one guy in an unidentified chatroom pissed me off", which does not have quite the same "the entire Perl community sucks" vibe.

 

[Cogman]

Well from your previous post:



...it sounds like you are using the "singular they" in a rather misleading way.

From what I can tell, a more neutral description of your experience would be "one guy in an unidentified chatroom pissed me off", which does not have quite the same "the entire Perl community sucks" vibe.

You are right, it was an isolated incidence. There were probably 4 people involved, 2 of which where quite rude. (with a couple of observers chiming in every so often to give a pat on the back to the rude individuals).

 

[pcunite]

This could be an isolated incidence or could be how the community works because Perl projects are largely single developer driven? I don't know, just suggesting. The Delphi community seems to always know the answers to my problems perhaps because of the structured nature of the language and the typical use scenarios. I normally only ask in pseudo and almost never post actual code.

The *nix community always seems a bit rude as well and that is where Perl got its start. On the MS platform everyone assumes you don't know everything and are probably just working on a single issue in a larger program.

 

[Nothinman]

This could be an isolated incidence or could be how the community works because Perl projects are largely single developer driven? I don't know, just suggesting. The Delphi community seems to always know the answers to my problems perhaps because of the structured nature of the language and the typical use scenarios. I normally only ask in pseudo and almost never post actual code.

The *nix community always seems a bit rude as well and that is where Perl got its start. On the MS platform everyone assumes you don't know everything and are probably just working on a single issue in a larger program.

Windows users/devs are also a lot more used to the tools being broken in some fashion or just working counter-intuitively, in the *nix world we're used to having the tools work as designed and have the source code to prove/disprove it. =)

 

[pcunite]

Windows users/devs are also a lot more used to the tools being broken in some fashion or just working counter-intuitively, in the *nix world we're used to having the tools work as designed and have the source code to prove/disprove it. =)

I can agree with the last part ... having access to source. Perhaps that creates the perception of elitism ... some people have put in the time to know the given program's flow and variable/object descriptions/layout. In the MS world nobody knows the behind the scenes and/or work on only small sections. You can ask and someone who knows that section will tell you how to interact with it.

In *nix world it is like "you have not spent a few weeks looking at the source? What are you? A freeloader!?" Lol, I don't know ... it has been a few years since I wrote software for the platform. The fragmenation and every dog has his own bone was awful to test for.

Did Linux Standard Base ever take hold?

 

[Nothinman]

I can agree with the last part ... having access to source. Perhaps that creates the perception of elitism ... some people have put in the time to know the given program's flow and variable/object descriptions/layout. In the MS world nobody knows the behind the scenes and/or work on only small sections. You can ask and someone who knows that section will tell you how to interact with it.

In *nix world it is like "you have not spent a few weeks looking at the source? What are you? A freeloader!?" Lol, I don't know ... it has been a few years since I wrote software for the platform. The fragmenation and every dog has his own bone was awful to test for.

Especially since a lot of the time all you have to do is jump on IRC and you're talking directly to the people developing that code. Something that seems confusing, wrong, etc to you probably makes perfect sense to them because they've been over it a hundred times. And there's also the language barrier to consider, English might not be their first language so they might be saying something more tersely or accusatory when they really don't mean it that way.

Most OSS devs deal with the fragmentation by creating packages for the distribution(s) they use/support and then just putting the source up for others to package for other distros.

Did Linux Standard Base ever take hold?

The big distributions follow it to a point, but not to the extent I'm sure you're wanting.

 

[veri745]

I thought that this thread was going to be about how if you look at code you wrote yourself more than a week after you wrote it, it's completely unreadable

 

[Cogman]

I thought that this thread was going to be about how if you look at code you wrote yourself more than a week after you wrote it, it's completely unreadable

that does certainly play a role in perl. Even with comments it can be a mine field of /[oa]e.w[32]-*./s's

 

[Fallen Kell]

I've never used Perl... Anytime I need to script anything I default to Python unless theres some reason why I can't.

hahaha.... swap Perl and Python and that is how I roll

 

[Fallen Kell]

I thought that this thread was going to be about how if you look at code you wrote yourself more than a week after you wrote it, it's completely unreadable

I personally thought it was going to be that if you read what someone else wrote in perl you have no idea what it is doing because there are about 1000 ways to do the exact same thing in perl, and you probably only know 10, which almost never overlap with the same 10 that the other person knows for how to do the exact same thing....

 

[pm]

I personally thought it was going to be that if you read what someone else wrote in perl you have no idea what it is doing because there are about 1000 ways to do the exact same thing in perl, and you probably only know 10, which almost never overlap with the same 10 that the other person knows for how to do the exact same thing....

Yeah, this is my experience too.

The problem that I have with Python is that whatever version someone wrote some script is not the version that I have installed on the machine that I'm using.