Re: Reasons for looking at your favourite module's source

[demerphq]

I'm more in the "have a look at the modules source" camp than not. I have learned a great deal from reviewing the code of much of the Perl 5.6 distribution. However I beleive that new users are just as likely to be overwhelmed by reviewing an intense modules code. CGI.pm for instance is not a particularly good place to point newbies to, nor are a number of others (P::RD, or frankly almost anything that Ive looked at from TheDamian :-). However intermediate and advanced programmers can learn a lot from both.

BrowserUk also has a point. I tend to like to have a fairly good understanding how the modules I use work. I dont need to grok it to the level he says he does, but when time permits I often reimplement things that I dont understand as a learning exercise.

I think the question here comes down to different issues. Is the person you are advising a total programming newbie? Are they a decent programmer in something else but fresh to Perl? Are the a student of programming, or a sysadmin looking for a quick hack? Etc etc.

For the record i've recommended a few times that people have a look at Data::Dumper's code, but those were mostly in the context of a specific question.

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demerphq

_{<Elian> And I do take a kind of perverse pleasure in having an OO assembly language...}