Jonathan W. Taylor

• About: Long-time Perl Developer. Casual hardware hacker. Father. Husband.

Recent Actions

• Commented on Newbie Poison
  "...hopefully we can agree to disagree on this point." Of course! "Has there been any contact with the authors of those two posts..." Absolutely not. I've seen how they treat people. "Sadly it seems neither of us have the enthusiasm...
• Commented on Newbie Poison
  Thank you for your fair and detailed response, Tom. I'll do my best to answer. Is silence better than an undiplomatic response? Silence is better than any response that isn't nice, honest, and helpful. If so, isn't that effectively going...
• Commented on Newbie Poison
  genehack: I admire you and appreciate all you do for the Perl community. I'm not merely railing on obnoxious answers; I think they should be eliminated completely. I won't join a list that tolerates obnoxious answers and is populated by...
• Commented on Newbie Poison
  [–]genehack 3 points 9 hours ago I can't comment on b.p.o ... again. If anybody can, please point the author of the original post to this response, please: Hi. I'm the moderator of that perl-beginners list. It may not seem...
• Commented on Newbie Poison
  First, thank you for taking the time to respond, Tom. A few years ago I might would have agreed with you. I unconsciously imagined newbies as thick skinned, confident, male, Caucasian, autodidacts like myself. Like yourself, I probably would have...
• Posted Newbie Poison to Jonathan W. Taylor

  After encountering CodeNewbie at OSCON 2016 I've been thinking a lot about why there are so few new developers interested in Perl. I haven't been a Perl beginner for a very long time so I went looking for resources and found

• Commented on Introducing SVG::Estimate
  Super cool!...
• Commented on Octothorpes Matter!
  Thanks for the comment, Mithaldu! I'm not sure how to compare IRC, Perlmonks, and Twitter because they're so different from one another. I'm a Perl developer and I happen to follow some pretty influential Perl developers and organizations on Twitter....
• Posted Octothorpes Matter! to Jonathan W. Taylor

  Interesting Twitter Searches:

  • #womenwhocode #javascript - Uncountable Entries
  • #womenwhocode #python - Uncountable Entries
• Commented on I start creating static perl
  RPerl is not the same but worth looking looking at for inspiration/collaboration...
• Posted Speak Up Or Step Away to Jonathan W. Taylor

  I recently attended #ILookLikeAnEngManager at OSCON 2016, in Austin, Texas. …

Comment Threads

• john napiorkowski commented on Newbie Poison

  Its not just with newbies, I find we often choose aggressive means of communicating with each other and generally fail to give each other useful feedback. I

• Tom M commented on Newbie Poison

  (tl;dr I think I'm just repeating here what genehack already said, and I'd defer to his experience anyway)

  A few years ago I might would have agreed with you. I unconsciously imagined newbies as thick skinned, confident, male, Caucasian, autodidacts like myself.

  uh, this seems like a topic drift to me? Whether or not someone conforms to a brogrammer stereotype, surely basic principles of "don't be unpleasant, and if you see unpleasant behaviour, call it out" apply?

  Like yourself, I probably would have evaluated communications in terms of …

• Tom M commented on Newbie Poison

  Silence is better than any response that isn't nice, honest, and helpful.

  That's fair enough, hopefully we can agree to disagree on this point.

  I saw some unpleasant behavior, called it out, and look where it landed me. Many won't even concede that the behavior I called out was unpleasant in the first place.

  Called it out - good. In an unrelated forum - bad. Has there been any contact with the authors of those two posts or the people asking the original questions?

  (yes, I…

• mauke commented on Newbie Poison

  This whole post looks unpleasant.

  > Many won't even concede that the behavior I called out was unpleasant in the first place.

  This sounds like "Many people disagree with me, how dare they" to me. (I'm one of them.)

  - "Condescending, abusive advice"
  - "So come on in newbies. You're stupid. You fill us with contempt. Get ready to complain. And most of all, don't waste our precious time."
  - "antique, pompous, and arrogant elitists who can't even treat each other with kindness and respect"

  Isn't all of this condescending, abusive advice itself?

• Duncan White commented on Newbie Poison

  Like others, I think you were a bit harsh picking out the "what CPU" question, that response seems clear simple and polite to me.

  But I do agree that the "bad practices" second answer was rather snotty and unhelpful - especially saying that the OP's code had several bad practices but not bothering to clearly explain: which specific bad practices he had in mind. Maybe the commentator had had a bad day?

  More generally, I completely agree that we should take the time to reply helpfully and politely on various Perl beginner forums.