<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?>
<node id="230203" title="Re: Re: Use strict warnings and diagnostics or die" created="2003-01-27 07:18:12" updated="2005-06-29 09:18:15">
<type id="11">
note</type>
<author id="230012">
jonadab</author>
<data>
<field name="doctext">
&lt;div&gt;&amp;gt; While "Because we say so and we know Perl and you don't&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;gt; and you'll thank us all one day and we won't help you if&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;gt; you don't help yourself by doing it etc" is an accurate&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;gt; if gramatically awful response it does not explain how&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;gt; it helps. Giving short examples makes it obvious but&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;gt; adds length.&lt;/div&gt;


&lt;p&gt;First off, in regard to length, I'm going to add my 
voice to those who say that strict should be in a separate
document from warnings and diagnostics.  That would help
with the length problem, and some people such as myself
who understand warnings perfectly are a big hazy on the
value of strict.  Splitting the thing up would make it
easier to read only the needed document.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Second, I want to disagree with your assessment that 
the short examples make the value obvious, specifically
in the case of strict.  I don't have the level of 
experience of some people here, but I'm not exactly a
complete Perl newbie either, and the value of strict
(especially strict vars) is not evident to me.  Further,
I was under the impression from the Camel (2nd ed) that
there is no consensus among the authors as to whether use
strict is really useful, let alone important, and that
it was kept optional precisely because some experienced
people don't like it.  What I still want to understand is
the reasoning behind people who consider it so important,
but neither the example nor the explanation helps.  If
anything, the example makes matters &lt;em&gt;worse&lt;/em&gt; because
any newbie can see that problem would have been caught by
warnings, without any need for strict.  You need an example
of something warnings would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have caught, that
strict &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; prevent, that's clearly an error but
could at least potentially be hard to spot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I want to understand what people see in strict, but 
this node as it currently stands isn't doing that for me.
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt; -- jonadab&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</field>
<field name="root_node">
87628</field>
<field name="parent_node">
87896</field>
</data>
</node>
