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> Another option would be to reach out to the maintainers of those sites and convince them to take down their sites or at the very least add links that prominen
by prodigal_erik 15y ago
> Another option would be to reach out to the maintainers of those sites and convince them to take down their sites or at the very least add links that prominently point to more modern content.
Not only should advocating link rot as the preferred solution alarm any web user, but there are people out there who specifically need to learn Perl 4 to maintain or port crappy old systems (they might even outnumber people selecting Perl 6 or 5 for new projects), and we shouldn't throw their tutorials down the memory hole to make the language look more sane. Stick with a notice that better dialects are available, please.
- jleader 15y agoI seriously doubt there are more people maintaining code in Perl 4 than there are starting new projects in Perl 5 or Perl 6. Perl 5 replaced Perl 4 in 1993. I personally know of several companies using Perl 5 when they start new projects; I think my last exposure to Perl 4 in production was around 1995. On the larger subject, I agree, old documentation shouldn't be discarded, but should be clearly marked as referring to an older version. Of course, the horrible outdated examples the original article mentions have such disclaimers, but people still see their code as representative Perl code.