On human nature

[thor]

My profile says that I've been around for almost 2 years now, so I'd say that I've been here long enough. It's fine to point out errors, but the manner in which you do it leaves a lot to be desired. In your boilerplate, you suggest reading the post a few more times. Unfortunately, first impressions are everything. If I read something and think it's offensive, I'm sure as hell not going to re-read it, just to see if the poster's intentions were neutral. It's human nature to take things at face value unless a deeper meaning is suspected. A simple "I think you meant $hash{$_}++" would have sufficed. However, you decided to get clever. Remember, that tone of voice is lost in written communication. Though you may have meant what you said in jest, I took it the wrong way, and I let it be known. Also of note, this can't be the first time that someone has called you on your tone, otherwise you wouldn't have gone to the trouble of making a boilerplate to pre-defend your words (I realize that you're not serious about the boilerplate, but still, more time than I would have bothered putting in to it).

To summarize, you may be a very good Perl coder, but if people close their ears before listening to what you have to say, your contribution to the community is minimized.

thor

[dug]

  Unfortunately, first impressions are everything.

Or fortunately. I was fortunate enough to read Learning Perl, and realize that merlyn is not only an adept writer, but that he also cares deeply about the subject matter. That was my first impression.

Now I come here and don't even have to pay money to learn from him. He just reviews code for free. Not a bad deal. One of these days I want my company to be making the kind of money that can bring Mr. Schwartz in for a week to do hands on training and code review with me and my fellow coders. Until then, I thank not only merlyn, but all of the other donors here at Perlmonks.

They are helping me become a better programmer. For free. That's tough to beat.

-- dug

[thor]

merlyn is not only an adept writer, but that he also cares deeply about the subject matter.

I don't doubt this for a bit. In fact, I couldn't agree more. What I am questioning here is what management likes to call "soft skills". Communication when someone else is on the receiving end is different than putting knowledge on a piece of paper. Arguably, the latter is easier.

thor

[initself]

Applying 'soft skills' to matters of logic and efficiency doesn't seem to apply here. We are putting knowledge on paper! I'd rather demand clarity than worrying about users being politically correct.

[joe++]

Hmm, interesting fact: my first impression of Merlyn's comment was not offensive at all. I mean, I happen to have read the appropriate Apocalypse about dereferencing List/Hash elements. For me, Merlyn's comment just looks like an enlightenment on the subject rather than saying "you're plain wrong" - a way of giving help and improve indpendent judgement at once.

On the other hand, if you're just here for some cut-and-paste coding, this way of thinking is likely a mere distraction.

Anyway, from Apocalypse 2 (not the main discussion about interpolation, but it's mentioned here as well):

Note for those who are thinking we should just stick with Perl 5 interpolation rules: We have to allow % to introduce interpolation now because individual hash values are no longer named with $foo{$bar}, but rather %foo{$bar}. So we might as well allow interpolation of complete hashes.

Conclusion: I don't think this discussion is worth a standard reply disclaimer block ;-)

--
Cheers, Joe