Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Higher-Order Perl

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was ~~no consensus~~ keep (amended per a comment on my talk page). Sandstein 19:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Higher-Order Perl

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Fails the notability guidelines for books (WP:NBOOK), and has done so since at least October 2016. Google research of the book fails to turn up any compelling notability. While it may be a very good book, I don't see a reason for it to have a Wikipedia page. HMman (talk) 19:45, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 20:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 06:31, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.

Wikipedia:Notability (books)#Criteria says:

A book is notable if it verifiably meets, through reliable sources, at least one of the following criteria:
The book has been the subject of two or more non-trivial published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself. This can include published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries, bestseller lists, and reviews. This excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.

Here are reviews:

Schweitzer, Martin (2005-07-22). "Higher-order Perl : transforming programs with programs". ACM Computing Reviews. Archived from the original on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
Rutz, Mark W. (2005-11-30). "Higher Order Perl: A Book Review". Linux Journal. Archived from the original on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
András, Bártházi (May 2005). "Higher-Order Perl". Weblabor (in Hungarian). ISSN 1785-9573. Archived from the original on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
Voglmaier, Reinhard (2005-11-29). "Book Review: Higher-Order Perl". Dr. Dobb's Journal. Archived from the original on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
Straňák, Pavel (June 2007). "Higher-order Perl: Transforming programs with programs" (PDF). The Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics. 87. Charles University: 92. ISSN 0032-6585. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-26.

Sources with quotes

Schweitzer, Martin (2005-07-22). "Higher-order Perl : transforming programs with programs". ACM Computing Reviews. Archived from the original on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
The reveiw notes:

This book clearly shows that Perl can sit just as easily with functional languages as it can with scripting languages. Fortunately, the author does not just try to present Perl as a functional language, but uses the functional style to illustrate how it is used to solve standard Perl programs elegantly and efficiently.
The examples in the book indicate that the author has his feet firmly on the ground. Most of the examples are practical, and it is quite easy to see where they may be applied. There are a few examples that are more academic, but they usually serve to illustrate a particular principal or idea and don’t give a particularly dry feel to the book.
...
One minor gripe is that the author sometimes gives more space than is necessary to pet topics (for example, memoization). Even though the book is almost 600 pages long, it reads like a shorter book. It discusses topics that are important for all programmers to know, and does it in a way that makes the material quite accessible. It is, quite simply, one of the best books on programming I have read for a long time.
Rutz, Mark W. (2005-11-30). "Higher Order Perl: A Book Review". Linux Journal. Archived from the original on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
The review notes:

HOP is written for experienced Perl programmers. Dominus dives right in with advanced techniques in the first chapter. So, you need to be capable of following code that makes use of all the standard Perl tools and data structures in order to grasp the ideas he is attempting to convey. If you are starting your journey with Perl, save HOP for a future trip. But, if you've been on the road for a while, this is just the book to liven things up.
This book is packed with valuable tips and techniques. Each topic is discussed in depth, with plenty of code examples and descriptions to keep the reader up to speed. That being said, be sure to carefully read and comprehend the examples. You will quickly become lost if you don't, because each section builds on previous topics. Dominus does his best to feed your brain slowly, but at some point it's up to you to follow along.
...
Mark Jason Dominus has hit his mark with Higher Order Perl. It is a very informative book that is a must read for Perl programmers who want to take their skills to the next level. Be sure to check out the book's Web site for further information. The site provides full-text search, all the code examples, an up-to-date errata list, mailing lists and much more.
András, Bártházi (May 2005). "Higher-Order Perl". Weblabor (in Hungarian). ISSN 1785-9573. Archived from the original on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
The review notes:

A Higher-Order Perl (Magasszintű Perl) című könyv egy egyedülálló kiadvány, nem csak Perl programozóknak. Számos könyvet láttam már, melyek segítségével elsajátíthatjuk a Perl programozást, de egyikük sem tanít meg minket valóban Perlben programozni. Ez a könyv a kivétel. Rendkívül olvasmányos, érthető módon ismerhetünk meg olyan programozási fogásokat, tervezési mintákat, melyek jóval hatékonyabbá tehetik munkánkat. Filozófiát, új nézőpontot kapunk olyan megoldások tekintetében is, melyeket eddig is használtunk.
...
Míg más könyvek a Perl szintaktikáját, a vezérlő szerkezeteket, s talán az alapvető programozási megoldásokat kínálják, ettől a könyvtől egészen mást kapunk. Előszavát a szerző a sokat hallott szólással indítja: sokszor hallani, hogy egy jó Fortran programozó bármely programozási nyelven tud Fortranban programozni - akár tud erről, akár nem. Ezt egészíti ki saját meglátásával: a legtöbb Perl programozó C programot ír Perlben - akár tud erről, akár nem. S ez így igaz.
Hogy a könyv tartalmáról is szót ejtsünk: gyakorlatilag Perlre szabott algoritmusokkal és programozási technikákkal ismertet meg minket, melyeket bátran hívhatunk akár tervezési mintáknak is. Teszi mindezt számos gyakorlati példával, olvasmányosan. Az első fejezetben a rekurzió és a kampók (callbacks/hooks) technikáját ismerhetjük meg, vagyis azt, hogy mi a rekurzív eljárások filozófiája, s hogyan használhatjuk ezt rugalmas, újra felhasználható kódok írására. A második fejezet a kapcsoló táblákkal (dispatch tables) ismerteti meg az olvasót, majd sor kerül a gyorsítótárazásra és a "memorization" technikára is (ez utóbbi lényege, hogy egy eljárás automatikusan gyorsítótárazni tudja a futási eredményét, nagyságrendekkel felgyorsítva egy programot, ha az ugyanazon értékkel többször is meghívja azt.
From the translation to English here^{Internet Archive}:
The book titled Higher-Order Perl is a singular work, not just for Perl programmers. I've already seen many books which support us in gaining knowledge of Perl programming, but not a single one of them really teaches us programming in Perl. This book is the exception. Extraordinarily well readable, in an understandable way, we can learn about such programming tricks and design patterns, which add increased effectiveness to our work. We gain deeper insight and a new point of view with respect to such solutions as we have used them up to now, too.
...
While other books provide Perl's syntax, the control structures and maybe the basic programming solutions, we get something completely different from this book. The author begins the preface with the frequently heard words: it may often be heard that a good FORTRAN programmer can write FORTRAN programs in any language, knowingly or not. To this he adds his own opinion, that most Perl programmers write C programs in Perl, knowingly or not. And this is true.
To say a word about the contents of the book, too: It makes us acquainted with algorithms and programming techniques fixed on practical Perl which we might easily call programming patterns. It does all of this with numerous practical, well-explained examples. The first chapter introduces us to recursion and callback techniques, and also to the philosophy behind recursive procedures, and to how we can make flexible use of it, by writing reusable code. The second chapter instructs the reader about dispatch tables, and then it's the turn for caching and memoization techniques as well (the principle of the latter being that an automatic process can speed up obtaining the result of a subroutine, accelerating a program by an order of magnitude, if the subroutine is called repeatedly with the same values).
Voglmaier, Reinhard (2005-11-29). "Book Review: Higher-Order Perl". Dr. Dobb's Journal. Archived from the original on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
The review notes:

The book provides not only practice but also a lot of programming theory that you'll appreciate when writing applications. In spite of the theoretical background that the author provides, I don't consider this to be an academic book.
...
The book first explains recursive problem solving and the fundamentals of callbacks. Callbacks are also discussed in the second chapter on dispatch tables and recursion. The chapters build on each other so it is wise to read the chapters in order, rather than to jump back and forth.
The third chapter explains caching in detail using the "memoization" written by the author. Many people think Perl does not know about iterators, but the fourth chapter shows the theory and some useful examples. The following chapter shows how to convert recursive functions into iterators. After a chapter about infinite streams, the author presents the concept of currying and higher-order functions.
Straňák, Pavel (June 2007). "Higher-order Perl: Transforming programs with programs" (PDF). The Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics. 87. Charles University: 92. ISSN 0032-6585. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
The brief review notes:
This book explains many concepts of functional programming on common everyday tasks and shows even experienced programmers that there might be a better way to use Perl than what they are used to. For anyone who comes from C or who is not deeply acquainted with functional programming, this book can be quite important. The author himself says about the book's intent:

There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Higher-Order Perl to pass Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".

Cunard (talk) 10:31, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The subject of the article meets WP:GNG / WP:NBOOK, which is shown by Cunard's sources. MarkZusab (talk) 14:31, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per nominator. Writing a single book doesn't meet notability guidelines. Wikipedia is not Amazon, and we should not have an article for every book mentioned on Amazon. This fails as per WP:PLUG, Wikipedia is not a commercial website for book advertisement, and that's all this article is used for. Octoberwoodland (talk) 01:43, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Mark Jason Dominus is the author of Higher-Order Perl. In 2016, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Jason Dominus (4th nomination) was closed as "redirect to Higher-Order Perl" to "allo[w] selective merging to the book article, subject to consensus among non-COI editors". Pinging participants who have not participated in this AfD: David Gerard (talk · contribs), Dominus (talk · contribs), Johnpacklambert (talk · contribs), Mark viking (talk · contribs), and Agricola44 (talk · contribs).
Pinging Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Jason Dominus (3rd nomination) participants who have been active in the last two years: Colapeninsula (talk · contribs), Rwxrwxrwx (talk · contribs), DGG (talk · contribs), and Ruud Koot (talk · contribs).
Cunard (talk) 08:28, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Leaning keep - Cunard's list of reviews in appropriate sources is actually pretty good. Of course, they should also be added to the article as refs - David Gerard (talk) 17:29, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, MarkZusab (talk · contribs), for adding these sources to the article. Cunard (talk) 09:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Another review appeared in "Book Review: Higher-Order Perl". Unix Review. Archived from the original on May 17, 2007. —Mark Dominus (talk) 00:11, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Another review appeared in "Cultured Perl: Perl books, Part 1". IBM DeveloperWorks. Archived from the original on February 22, 2007. —Mark Dominus (talk) 00:19, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Mark Dominus, you can't add "review links" (as a comment) for a book which is written by you in the first place. In short, you are directly influencing the direction of this AfD discussion - a classic case of WP:COI and which is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia. With time, let others decide the actual value of your book. If it's good enough, then sooner or later it will be on Wikipedia. - Hatchens (talk) 03:30, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No, that's not right--as long as an editor discloses their COI, which is obviously the case here, they are welcome to contribute to the AfD discussion and the closer will take this into account. See WP:DISCUSSAFD where this is mentioned. In particular, if Mark Dominus has found some additional independent reliable sources (I haven't looked at them yet), then those are reliable sources no matter who brought them up. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 03:43, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

indeed - although a COI suggests you should probably avoid editing the article, it's fine and often useful (as here) for a subject to comment, especially on an AFD - David Gerard (talk) 14:44, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Thanks go to Cunard for researching sources and to MarkZusab for adding them. The ACM Computing Reviews, Linux Journal, Dr. Dobbs and Prague Bulletin are all reliable sources. The Unix Review, mentioned by Mark Dominus above, is also reliable. While none of these reviews are long, they show impact and provide enough verifiable content to write a well-sourced stub on the book. Multiple independent reliable sources with enough depth to write an article show notability per WP:GNG. A notable book and an article with no major problems suggests keeping the article. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 03:57, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – Per a source review, it has been qualified that this book meets point #1 of WP:BOOKCRIT. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 05:06, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.