''PerlMonks'' is a community

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

covering all aspects of

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

programming and other related topics such as

web applications A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

and

system administration An IT administrator, system administrator, sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administr ...

. It is often referred to by users as 'The

Monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of Monasticism, monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in Cenobitic monasticism, communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a ...

'. The name PerlMonks, and the general style of the website, is designed to both humorously reflect the almost religious zeal that programmers sometimes have for their favorite language, and also to engender an atmosphere of calm reflection and consideration for other users. Users (referred to as

monk A monk (; from , ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a man who is a member of a religious order and lives in a monastery. A monk usually lives his life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many reli ...

s) create discussion topics which other monks can reply to and vote as good or bad. Users have an experience rating (XP) that roughly measures their participation in the PerlMonks website as perceived by the other monks, not necessarily their proficiency in the

language. All monks have a 'home node', providing profile information and an area for Monks to personalize. Notable members include the creator of the Perl language, the authors of several well-known Perl books and the authors of numerous

CPAN The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is a software repository of over 220,000 software modules and accompanying documentation for 45,500 distributions, written in the Perl programming language by over 14,500 contributors. ''CPAN'' can de ...

modules. CPAN authors frequently promote and provide support for their modules at PerlMonks.

Features

The site has tutorials, reviews, Q&A, poetry, obfuscated code, as well as sections for code snippets and entire scripts and modules. Generally, the section of the site with the most traffic is Seekers of Perl Wisd

where users of all experience levels ask Perl-related questions. Some questions are from beginners trying to understand the basics of the language, while others are from seasoned veterans looking for methods to improve upon

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

s or to optimize performance. Those who provide answers are also of varying experience levels. Much of the site's content consists of specific code examples. Some of these examples are for Perl's core featur

as documented on the official Perl documentation website (http://perldoc.perl.org). Other examples are for the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (

), which is a repository for Perl libraries (known as modules) that are not part of the core Perl distribution. The code that the site runs on is a much hacked fork of an early version of the Everything Engine and was created by Nathan Oostendorp as part of Blockstackers Intergalactic — the firm that also ran

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally billed itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories on science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evaluated by site ...

. As a result, PerlMonks has many features in common with both Everything2 and

like its strong emphasis placed on user feedback. Another feature that PerlMonks retains from Everything is the Chatterbox, which is a text chat area at the side of every page. Logged-in users can type in anything they want, and it appears for all users to see. Talk in the chatterbox is often Perl related, and various tools (written in Perl) have been written to improve the chatterbox experience. Some come to PerlMonks primarily for the chatterbox. Others find the chatterbox distracting and turn it off.

References

External links

* http://www.perlmonks.org/ {{Perl Perl Computing websites Modularity