Re^2: Far More than Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know about Prototypes in Perl -- by Tom Christiansen

[DrHyde]

Please make sure to also point them at the bit near the beginning of the book that says that everything in it is only a guideline, and should be ignored if you know better.

[eyepopslikeamosquito]

Whether I point that out to them depends on their Perl skills and their personality. I doubt that an (argumentative) Perl newbie is likely to "know better" than Tom Christiansen and Damian Conway on the complex issue of Perl prototypes.

Unfortunately, as Beth once noted:

In the late 1990's Justin Kruger and David Dunning did a series of studies demonstrating that the less skillful had a tendency to overrate their abilities and fail to recognize expertise in others.

And I really don't want to encourage debate with people like this. :)

Update: The wayback machine url for this historic argumentative bulletin board exchange seems to intermittently fail, so I'll embed bk's famous quote here. This classic quote, the inspiration for Acme::USIG, is from "bk" to davorg after davorg had the temerity to suggest that starting Perl scripts with use strict was a good idea:

No,but its true-- strict really does suck. I hate it. Its gay. Dont tell me ehat to do. And nobody wants your to be back, either.