Reviews by Pista Palo

File-ChangeNotify (0.20)

Moose-infected garbage for monitoring changes to files. There are lots of better solutions on CPAN, including EV, Linux::Inotify2, and AnyEvent::Inotify::Simple.

Pista Palo - 2011-04-24T05:56:35 (permalink)

8 out of 16 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Algorithm-BMI (0.01)

This is mostly pointless, since all you need to know is:

BMI = kg/m^2

or, in standard units:

BMI = lb*703/in^2

In any case, there are better ways to measure lean body mass, and if you're a programmer, you could probably stand to drop a few pounds.

Pista Palo - 2011-04-06T19:44:37 (permalink)

2 out of 12 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Data-Paginate (0.0.6)

Worse than the usual DMUEY (Daniel Muey) crap -- it doesn't contain anything! Avoid anything by this author.

Pista Palo - 2011-04-06T19:29:06 (permalink)

1 out of 11 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

cPanel (v0.0.1)

Typical DMUEY (Daniel Muey) crap. Avoid anything by this author.

Pista Palo - 2011-04-06T19:28:17 (permalink)

1 out of 12 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

last (v0.0.1)

Typical DMUEY (Daniel Muey) crap. Avoid anything by this author.

Pista Palo - 2011-04-06T19:26:47 (permalink)

1 out of 11 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Unix-PID-Tiny (0.9)

It conforms to the "Tiny" spec AFAICT, but it's the same useless garbage as Unix::PID. Avoid.

Pista Palo - 2011-04-06T19:22:35 (permalink)

1 out of 9 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Unix-PID (0.23)

A hideous interface to a bunch of unrelated functionality with bizarre prereqs. Utter garbage.

Have you ever wanted a single module that would let you (1) split "ps" output by column; (2) create lockfiles containing PIDs; and (3) call "kill" and "waitpid" through an awkward interface? If so, this is the one for you!

What do you think

$x = new Unix::PID;

does? If you thought it might create an object representing stuff about the current process, you would be wrong. If you want that, you use

$x->pid_info($$);

Yep. $x contains valuable state such as the location of "ps" on your system.

Pista Palo - 2011-04-05T20:37:32 (permalink)

2 out of 7 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Lingua-LO-Romanize (0.08)

Oh, look... it's a big look-up table. One that will take forever to install thanks to its insane prereqs:

deps.cpantesters.org/?module=Lingua::...

Another typical Moose-turd.

Pista Palo - 2011-03-27T18:14:52 (permalink)

2 out of 11 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Modern-Perl (1.03)

This groundbreaking module has been made obsolete: see Acme::Very::Modern::Perl and Acme::Postmodern::Perl.

Pista Palo - 2011-03-23T02:52:12 (permalink)

4 out of 17 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

DateTime-Tiny (1.04)

A welcome alternative to DateTime's hyper-complexity. It won't do date arithmetic in Mongolian Daylight Savings Time, but for most people's basic needs, it's just fine.

Pista Palo - 2011-03-22T13:49:24 (permalink)

3 out of 4 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

bareword-filehandles (0.003)

Yay, another sad (pra|do)gma module in the style of "indirect." Here's an easier solution: if you don't want to use bareword filehandles, then don't use them.

Pista Palo - 2011-03-15T18:32:10 (permalink)

2 out of 16 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

ConditionSystem (0.01)

The author's heart is in the right place -- Lisp's "conditions" are a good way to deal with errors -- but... This turd salad forces you to install the Moose-plus-dependencies nightmare FOR ITS TESTS. Please try again.

Pista Palo - 2011-02-11T19:32:13 (permalink)

2 out of 9 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

true (0.14)

Why type "1;\n" at the end of your script when you can type "use true;\n" at the beginning? Because the latter makes you look "Modern" with a capital "M," that's why! Will someone rid us of these meddlesome chromatards?

Pista Palo - 2011-02-11T19:31:46 (permalink)

4 out of 19 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Text-BibTeX (0.43)

Broken after switching to a new maintainer: "I am sorry for all other languages that might be using this library [btparse]. For them my suggestion is that they make Text::BibTeX as a dependency." Use version 0.34 to get the working version.

Pista Palo - 2010-04-01T06:27:39 (permalink)

2 out of 5 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Module-Starter (1.54)

If "h2xs -AXn" doesn't work for you, a basic script to create a new module (Makefile.PL, MANIFEST, Module.pm, test.pl, README, ChangeLog) is 100-200 lines of simple print statements. Module::Starter takes this simple process and makes it complicated and annoying. It adds useless boilerplate to several files, then adds a failing test that looks for the boilerplate it just added. It creates a random file "ignore.txt" that does... something. It looks like "ignore.txt" used to be the author's .cvsignore or .gitignore. It creates a Changes file in its own idiosyncratic format, with unhelpful content you will need to delete and replace.

It will take you less time to write your own "module starter" than to install and run "module-starter", then clean up the mess it creates.

Pista Palo - 2010-04-01T01:51:45 (permalink)

4 out of 9 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Test-ExistsExecutable (0.024)

I'm not really seeing the point. What's wrong with using

$file =~ m!/! ? -x $file : grep { -x "$_/$f" } split /:/, $ENV{PATH};

Pista Palo - 2010-03-24T10:40:52 (permalink)

1 out of 13 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Bio-Phylo (0.18)

Not actually a module; just a META.yml.

EDIT: The author seems to have fixed the module.

Pista Palo - 2010-03-02T18:19:03 (permalink)

0 out of 7 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

common-sense (3.0)

Something in short supply these days...

EDIT: @ADAMK -- It seems straightforward to make an alias/copy named Enterprise::Perl::SolutionsManagementFactory or some-such. Is there demand for such a thing?

Pista Palo - 2009-12-15T18:52:16 (permalink)

1 out of 22 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Data-Rmap (0.62)

Nice! A simple, well-thought-out interface to arbitrary data structure traversal. Some sort of hook for classes (e.g. an "_rmap" sub) would be a nice addition.

Pista Palo - 2009-12-15T18:20:20 (permalink)

1 out of 3 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Acme-Very-Modern-Perl (0.02)

Why go for half measures in your attempt to be "Modern?" Whoever you're trying to placate, this module will do it. Awesome!

Pista Palo - 2009-12-15T18:16:08 (permalink)

3 out of 6 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Mouse (0.43)

A nice, light-weight alternative to the Moose fad.

Pista Palo - 2009-12-07T20:41:54 (permalink)

4 out of 11 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Symbol-Util (0.0202)

A complete waste of space. Why use this module to write

print join "\n", keys %{ stash("main") };

when you can just write

print join "\n", keys %main::;

Piotr: Maybe you could edit your review to point at the important parts?

Pista Palo - 2009-11-26T21:58:30 (permalink)

2 out of 10 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

WWW-Search (2.507)

Please either stop listing Test::Pod::Coverage as a prerequisite, or move this module to Acme::.

Pista Palo - 2009-11-23T00:13:33 (permalink)

0 out of 21 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Test-Pod-Coverage (1.08)

This module is a minor CPAN plague:

cpants.perl.org/dist/used_by/Test-Pod...

Please don't make it a prerequisite.

Pista Palo - 2009-11-23T00:07:36 (permalink)

3 out of 20 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Algorithm-TravelingSalesman-BitonicTour (0.05)

Please either stop listing Test::Pod::Coverage as a prerequisite, or move this module to Acme::.

Pista Palo - 2009-11-22T23:57:36 (permalink)

0 out of 22 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Algorithm-CurveFit (1.04)

Please either stop listing Test::Pod::Coverage as a prerequisite, or move this module to Acme::

Pista Palo - 2009-11-22T23:55:18 (permalink)

0 out of 26 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

AI-ParticleSwarmOptimization (1.003)

Please either stop listing Test::Pod::Coverage as a prerequisite, or move this module to Acme::.

Pista Palo - 2009-11-22T23:53:27 (permalink)

0 out of 24 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Abstract-Meta-Class (0.13)

Please either stop listing Test::Pod::Coverage as a prerequisite, or move this module to Acme::.

Pista Palo - 2009-11-22T23:52:25 (permalink)

0 out of 24 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

File-Map (0.19)

The import interface is wonky (why make people write a bunch of ":foo"?), but this module is heading in the right direction.

Pista Palo - 2009-11-08T21:41:03 (permalink)

4 out of 9 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Scope-Upper (0.09)

The interface is a bit wonky ("$ctx = SUB UP SUB"?!), and the black magic may be fragile to internals changes. But force-unwinding the stack without eval or magic goto is seriously cool and useful, letting you do non-local control transfers in other people's code without changing it.

Pista Palo - 2009-07-14T05:49:37 (permalink)

4 out of 7 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Test-Functional (0.03)

Just what we need: another test module with its own special syntax. Until there's a "SEE ALSO" section explaining why you would want to use this instead of the other 1500 (I kid you not) Test module on CPAN, this is unadulterated FAIL.

EDIT: Adam J. Foxson and sundry down-voters: It's the least you can do to explain how your re-implemented wheel differs from our current 1500 wheels.

Pista Palo - 2009-07-09T12:51:07 (permalink)

1 out of 16 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Proc-Class (0.03)

There are levels of silliness to which one should not stoop. Even in the synopsis, the order of slurp_stdout() and slurp_stderr() could be wrong.

Pista Palo - 2009-07-09T03:07:15 (permalink)

1 out of 10 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Sys-Mmap-Simple (0.13)

WTH? The same author has also submitted File::Map, which does basically the same thing. Which one is supported?

Pista Palo - 2009-06-29T10:06:26 (permalink)

1 out of 9 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

libwww-perl (5.827)

LWP::Simple shows how interfaces should be done:

use LWP::Simple;

$content = get("www.sn.no/";);

die "Couldn't get it!" unless defined $content;

If I want to get a URL's contents, I get() the "URL's" $content. IO::All takes it a step further, but LWP::Simple shows how to make easy things easy.

Pista Palo - 2009-06-24T10:04:19 (permalink)

3 out of 5 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Devel-Size (0.72)

It does what it claims, and is well-documented, but the size() function is of limited use; most of the time you want total_size(). Also, it occasionally crashes calculating the size of magic variables.

Pista Palo - 2009-06-20T09:27:22 (permalink)

7 out of 9 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

PadWalker (1.7)

Works as advertised, and provides all the necessary operations: peek_my to get variables declared in a scope, and peek_sub to get variables used (declared and closed over). For its limited audience, this is a good module.

Pista Palo - 2009-06-20T09:23:26 (permalink)

4 out of 6 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

OP (0.212)

FAIL: "Using the OP module initializes all built-in object types, and causes strict, diagnostics, OP::Class, OP::Type, Perl6::Subs, and Error to be imported by the caller."

In other words, it "helpfully" pulls in a bunch of garbage when you import it, including a source filter. But hey, once you're done installing its 42 dependencies, your next trip to the CPAN will be much faster, since it's probably already installed.

Pista Palo - 2009-05-25T07:41:02 (permalink)

5 out of 19 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

MooseX-MethodAttributes (0.18)

For today's edition of "CPAN one-liners," we have ten -- count 'em, ten! -- classes and a random dependency on namespace::clean to replace this:

use attributes; attributes::get(\&f)

with this:

use MooseX::MethodAttributes; @{main->meta->get_method('f')->attributes}

hdp: There is being dishonestly clueless, and then there is that thing you're doing. Please stop.

Sam, Sam, Sam... There are those who believe that simple procedural interfaces are sufficient for many language features, and those that believe that all must be accessed by pedantically "object-oriented" interfaces.

If you're not sold on the first idea, you might reach the conclusion of Sam. In which case, please continue to reinvent wheels badly, and hope that people don't ever cally your code "pointless style fapping" as soon as you write it.

Pista Palo - 2009-05-25T07:35:14 (permalink)

2 out of 29 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Statistics-Descriptive (2.7)

Note that since changing maintainers, this module has gone the way of "best practices" code shuffling while not improving functionality. 2.6 was the last feature-related release.

Pista Palo - 2009-05-10T15:19:49 (permalink)

3 out of 8 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Proc-Exists (0.94)

Yay! Another way to spell "kill(0, @pids)"!

Pista Palo - 2009-03-26T22:56:04 (permalink)

2 out of 17 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Chart-Gnuplot (0.08)

Looks okay, but if you already know the gnuplot language, then it's probably easier to generate a script and run it. If you don't, then you will probably have a hard time using this module. Plus, it's easy to learn.

Pista Palo - 2009-03-12T09:39:13 (permalink)

0 out of 6 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Perl-Critic-Bangs (1.02)

Please God let there be a Perl::Critic::Bangs::Yermom.

Pista Palo - 2009-03-07T18:09:01 (permalink)

1 out of 18 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

File-Stat-Moose (0.06)

Another fail-burger from the master chef! Who could have known that CPAN needed more than one hard-to-use reimplementation of File::stat? Who could have imagined that this need could only be filled with 14 prerequisites?

Pista Palo - 2009-02-01T22:19:41 (permalink)

5 out of 15 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

IO-Moose (0.09)

Dear God, what a bucket of fail! If reading the contents of a file requires more text than "slurp $filename," or requires other modules, you have lost.

Pista Palo - 2009-02-01T09:25:13 (permalink)

4 out of 18 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Moose-Tiny (0.0.3)

A not-quite-funny joke that belongs in Acme::.

Pista Palo - 2009-01-27T06:36:00 (permalink)

5 out of 14 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

File-Stat-OO (0.03)

I'm not sure why this exists when we already have File::stat, with an equivalent but simpler interface. The docs even link to File::stat in the "See Also" section, but give no comparison.

Pista Palo - 2008-12-17T06:21:29 (permalink)

3 out of 8 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

ToolSet (0.99)

Another module from the "I can has arrows" crowd. Why do interfaces have to suck like this? There is no reason for the string "ToolSet->" to appear anywhere in the synopsis example.

EDIT replying to other reviewers: My guess is that no one will extend this module by subclassing (or even use it at all, FWIW). Feel free to point to examples to the contrary.

Pista Palo - 2008-12-05T17:27:48 (permalink)

2 out of 17 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Object-Disoriented (0.02)

Brilliant! See also Acme::Nooo, for another version.

Pista Palo - 2008-08-17T17:37:06 (permalink)

2 out of 9 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Sub-Curried (0.04)

See also Attribute::Curried...

Pista Palo - 2008-07-26T20:05:19 (permalink)

1 out of 9 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Module-CPANTS-Analyse (0.81)

FAIL:

my $analyser=Module::CPANTS::Analyse->new({

dist=>'path/to/Foo-Bar-1.42.tgz',

});

$analyser->unpack;

$analyser->analyse;

$analyser->calc_kwalitee;

Why not just:

$res = Module::CPANTS::Analyze('path/to/foo')

Pista Palo - 2008-05-24T22:28:36 (permalink)

2 out of 24 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Module-Changes (0.05)

Big bucket o' fail. A marginally useful feature ("machine-readable ChangeLog") requiring a bucketload of vaguely-related dependencies. This is a waste of bits.

Pista Palo - 2008-05-03T22:31:16 (permalink)

3 out of 17 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Test-TAP (0.02)

Is this testing meta-humor, or meta-testing humor? Either way, do not want...

Pista Palo - 2008-04-10T09:58:53 (permalink)

0 out of 25 found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No