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PIR Tutorial

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Klaas-Jan Stol

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Mar 8, 2007, 7:26:09 AM3/8/07
to Perl 6 Internals
hi,
I've started a bit on a PIR tutorial on the wiki.
If anybody can spare a few moments, some feedback would be very welcome!

regards,
kjs

Julian Fondren

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Mar 8, 2007, 8:28:43 AM3/8/07
to Klaas-Jan Stol, Perl 6 Internals

I don't really have any feedback on what you have, but for what
you don't have:

1. docs/compiler_faq.pod teaches exceptions nicely enough; I think
a tutorial of it could mainly use a 'why labels and not subs?'
and maybe a small example of what happens when you accidently
enter the exception-handler.

2. docs/art/pp003-oop.pod teaches OOP in PIR

3. docs/glossary.pod and docs/compiler_faq.pod talk about
coroutines (and compiler_faq claims to talk about closures,
but does not).

4. docs/compiler_faq.pod talks about optional arguments and tail
calls and slurpy arguments and such; you might show a
tail-recursive function as an alternative to gotos (and talk
about any performance concerns?)

5. pdds/pdd20_lexical_vars.pod describes those well.

6. art/pp002-pmc.pod is really cool, with lots of small programs
that dissect the environment, and I pretty much learned PIR
from it the other day, myself.

Following 6, I think a tutorial would benefit from compilable
chunks of code more than from skeleton-PIR. I think it'd be
generally nice if the tutorial could have pervasive links into
deeper documentation, so that you can on one pass use it for
a basic tutorial and then on a second pass use it as a platform
for deeper understanding.

You should definitely point out that Parrot has wizzy
internationalized strings, if you plan to go into PMC types :-)

Cheers,
Julian

James E Keenan

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Mar 8, 2007, 10:04:55 PM3/8/07
to perl6-i...@perl.org, Klaas-Jan Stol, Perl 6 Internals

I am very glad to see this. One suggestion and one request for
clarification:

1. First bullet point in FAQ should be: What does PIR stand for?

Although you answer it two paragraphs below in the Introduction, this
deserves to be right at the top. Until today, I did not know what PIR
stood for -- and that was despite working on the project for four
months. So others are likely not to know the abbreviation's meaning,
either. (And while you're at it, you should state what 'PASM' stands
for as well.)

2. Under your "your first Parrot program" you say type this "assuming
you successfully compiled Parrot." My guess is that that means you
successfully completed 'make install' -- correct? If so, it would
probably be clearer to say "have successfully installed Parrot."


HTH. Thank you very much.

kid51

Klaas-Jan Stol

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Mar 9, 2007, 6:55:18 AM3/9/07
to James E Keenan, perl6-i...@perl.org
James E Keenan wrote:
> Klaas-Jan Stol wrote:
>> hi,
>> I've started a bit on a PIR tutorial on the wiki.
>> If anybody can spare a few moments, some feedback would be very welcome!
>>
>
> I am very glad to see this. One suggestion and one request for
> clarification:
>
> 1. First bullet point in FAQ should be: What does PIR stand for?
>
> Although you answer it two paragraphs below in the Introduction, this
> deserves to be right at the top. Until today, I did not know what PIR
> stood for -- and that was despite working on the project for four
> months. So others are likely not to know the abbreviation's meaning,
> either. (And while you're at it, you should state what 'PASM' stands
> for as well.)
It's fixed. At this point I added references to some other files (I was
not aware of the docs in docs/art), to prevent duplication of efforts.

>
> 2. Under your "your first Parrot program" you say type this "assuming
> you successfully compiled Parrot." My guess is that that means you
> successfully completed 'make install' -- correct? If so, it would
> probably be clearer to say "have successfully installed Parrot."
I think installing parrot is broken at this point (but I'm not sure).
Why should one have to install parrot before using it? It's well
possible to use it just having compiled Parrot, right?

>
>
> HTH. Thank you very much.
>
> kid51

thanks for the feedback,
kjs

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