Re: Going back in time...
by GrandFather (Saint) on Jul 12, 2007 at 08:55 UTC
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Join PerlMonks! ;) Read the Tutorials. Learn your way around the perl docs.
DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel
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Re: Going back in time...
by Gavin (Archbishop) on Jul 12, 2007 at 11:51 UTC
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Think more about the problem in question before asking others.
It is surprising how often given further thought a suitable solution is found without asking someone. This often saves face when the answer is so often glaringly simple when told.
Gavin | [reply] |
Re: Going back in time...
by samizdat (Vicar) on Jul 12, 2007 at 17:48 UTC
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Indeed. One of my dearest ambitions is to create my own little language, preferably in Perl.
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Re: Going back in time...
by Jenda (Abbot) on Jul 12, 2007 at 11:51 UTC
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If I could go back in time to when I just started learning programming I'd have many much more important pieces of advice to give myself.
Update: Considering I was about twelve at that time, most of it would probably not make sense to the young me though :-( I guess I'd need to play guardian angel for myself, giving the advice piece after piece at the right times.
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What makes you a good programmer?
by misc (Friar) on Jul 12, 2007 at 12:00 UTC
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Learning to program was always easy and pure fun to me.
However, I would certainly be better if perlmonks would have existed this time, and I would have read more source code of others this way.
Be it perl or anything else.
There's a question of me:
What makes you a good programmer ?
- No bugs ?
- Code easy to read ?
- Small memory print ?
- Fast code ?
- Programming fast ?
- Code Easy to maintain ?
- Well written documentation ?
- Reusable sources ?
There should be more possiblities, but even the questions above are contradicting.
I personally try to write as much reusable code as I can,
I believe this way you cover most of the points above. | [reply] |
Re: Going back in time...
by hossman (Prior) on Jul 12, 2007 at 19:03 UTC
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(That last one bit me really badly in my first big project ... shift/unshift set the meme in my head, and when i typed it and ran my program, sure enough $foo was undefined ... after that line was executed)
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Re: Going back in time...
by rpanman (Scribe) on Jul 13, 2007 at 13:12 UTC
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For perl put the following two lines at the top of every script:
use strict;
use warnings;
It'll save hours. | [reply] [d/l] |
Re: Going back in time...
by moritz (Cardinal) on Jul 16, 2007 at 07:27 UTC
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There's nothing I would say to my younger self that could easily be said in one or two sentences.
But there are two things I'd like to show my younger self.
The first thing is how much a test suite can speed up development. I knew, then, that tests are good, but was just too lazy to write them. Now I really appreciate tests, and how much they can help you in finding bugs if run every so often.
The second thing is how easy some things are that looked very complicated back then. I always thought that writing a parser or (unthinkable) a simple compiler was horribly complicated - and lots of other things.
Some of this changed while reading other people's code, some by thinking on my own, and the compiler and parser thing by reading Let's build a Compiler
Both of these points are nothing that my younger self believed if being told in one sentence, so I'd have to really show it.
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Re: Going back in time...
by whereiskurt (Friar) on Jul 14, 2007 at 13:57 UTC
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esk555:
I'm replying quite literally to the question of "what can I learn early-on to make learning the hard things in Perl easier?" And with that in mind...
I'm not going to rant too too much about this (I feel like I could type a book to that question) so here's just one angle: Approach Perl as it's own distinct language. It's exactly because Perl is a hodgepodge of all these OTHER *nix wizardrys slammed together, that we must treat it as UNIQUE (i.e. NOT "it's just like the shell" or NOT "it's an awk regex".) It's not just a Awk/Sed/grep/shell facade, it's a language that supports many different types of other languages. I'm not saying ignore the history -- I'm just saying approach Perl as something that's like nothing else. It's general purpose like you never knew general purpose. :-) Once you accept this fact, you'll be able to break outside of that damn box that we all start in...
Maybe the question becomes: How do I treat Perl as it's own unique language? I would say assumptions are the enemy and doing it yourself is the best way to learn. Solve real problems. Refuse to do the same tasks over and over, instead find ways to do them with Perl. Perl can do anything, and therefore, so can you.
Never stop learning, too. ;-)
Kurt
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Re: Going back in time...
by EvanK (Chaplain) on Jul 16, 2007 at 17:37 UTC
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I'm reminded of a humorous quote:
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
-Albert Einstein
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Systems development is like banging your head against a wall...
It's usually very painful, but if you're persistent, you'll get through it.
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Re: Going back in time...
by deorth (Scribe) on Jul 14, 2007 at 09:12 UTC
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There are no shortcuts to the truly beautiful sculptures you *will* create in the future. Step by step gets you where you want to go, don't be disheartened, and listen to the smart people. :) | [reply] |
Re: Going back in time...
by cdarke (Prior) on Jul 17, 2007 at 15:03 UTC
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