Perl Progressions

(apologies to people who've already seen this on p5p)

I've been thinking recently about "Perl Progressions". It'd be a
(probably) wiki driven site full of things like:

   Currently:

   You use regular expressions effectively and understand well what the
   basic elements do ('.', '()', '[]', '+', '*').

   Try this:

   * use zero width assertions
   * use non-capturing parens when you don't need to capture matched  
text
   * use the 'x' modifier to include whitespace and comments

----

   Currently:

   You have a source formatting style you are happy with.

   Try this:

   * integrate Perl::Tidy with your editor and avoid manual
     reformatting entirely

----

   Currently:

   You use h2xs -X to create a new skeleton module

   Try this:

   * investigate the Module::Starter family of modules that are  
dedicated
     to this purpose

The site would eventually comprise hundreds of 'if this describes you
then you might also like to try these things' propositions.

My thinking is that a lot of our advocacy efforts focus on bringing new
people to Perl but we should probably now be thinking at least as much
in terms of retention. Giving people easily digestible nuggets of skill
advancement might help.

The ethos would be something "do one progression a week until you've
done them all - then start writing some of your own"

If people think that's a worthwhile idea and I'm not re-inventing some
wheel I don't know about I'll set it up.

-- 
Andy Armstrong, hexten.net