user tangent I am not really a 'programmer' in the sense it is used here. I studied English and IT for the Humanities and work in publishing. I came across Perl by looking over the shoulder of a programmer who had come in to do our CGI magic. I went and bought a book called "Perl 5 Complete" which was full of errors and drove me mad. The <a href="http://oreilly.com/perl/">camel</a> arrived just in time. The only other programming language I have used is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTalk">HyperTalk</a> (and it's descendant <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(programming_language)">Lingo</a>). I am also familiar with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)">Logo</a>, an educational tool which I came across through the work of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert">Seymour Papert</a>. My early Perl stuff reads like HyperTalk with a few sigils thrown in, and treating the computer like you would a child. <blockquote> One day my daughter came in, looked over my shoulder at some Perl 4 code, and said, "What is that, swearing?" --Larry Wall </blockquote> I like cute method names like <a href="http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?List::MoreUtils">natatime</a>(n-at-a-time), onomatopoeic ones like <a href="http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/chomp.html">chomp</a>(), and "don't mess with me" ones like <a href="http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/splice.html">splice</a>() and <a href="http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?List::Util">reduce</a>(). Illuminating facts about Perl: (work in progress) <ul> <li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/pdl/index.php?title=Team">PDL Team Members</a> (the people behind just one namespace on <a href="http://search.cpan.org/">CPAN</a>)</li> <li><a href="http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=741564">There is no Perl Illuminati</a></li> </ul> Illuminating perlmonks nodes: (work in progress) <ul> <li><a href="http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=757127">tobyink</a>'s answer to <a href="http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=952087">What does "! !" do?</a></li> </ul> Favourite Larry Wall quote: <blockquote> Part of what's confusing the issue is that DESTROY is a verb. It was done that way by analogy to FETCH and STORE, but the use of a verb is unfortunate, in retrospect. I should have named it something like YOU_ARE_ABOUT_TO_BE_SHOT_DO_YOU_HAVE_ANY_LAST_WORDS. Just as an object oriented design will often separate initializers from constructors, it will also separate finalizers from destructors. DESTROY is designed to be a destructor that can call a finalizer, but to confuse it with a finalizer would be, er, confusing. </blockquote> Bearing in mind I'm no expert, I offer these tips to budding object oriented programmers: <ul> <li>use <a href="http://perldoc.perl.org/parent.html">parent</a></li> <li>use <a href="http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Object::Tiny">Object::Tiny</a></li> <li>use <a href="http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Config::Tiny">Config::Tiny</a></li> <li>learn to roll your own - here's some <a href="http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=152358">baccy</a> and some <a href="http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=556407">rizzla</a></li> <li>draw diagrams on paper and keep above your monitor</li> <li>it's all in the data (which is never quite what you think it is)</li> </ul> 2013-06-19 04:59:42 1149 905404 955117 125 Ireland