in reply to
"Rites of Passage" wheel reinventing
In Thoughts on script portability I touched upon some of the reasons why
you might "re-invent the wheel." Sometimes all
you have are sticks and stones and you have to be inventive.
I can think of another reason you might want to re-invent
the wheel. If you have a crusty professor like I am when
I am teaching you are darn sure going to end up
re-inventing the wheel.
When I was teaching Perl to college students I often would
pose a problem to them, for instance (right out of my
lesson plan:)
Write a script to parse an input file and create a tree
of HTML elements and their leaf nodes.
Now if I had to solve that problem in the real world
I would be looking to CPAN in the HTML::* space for
the right module. But for someone learning Perl it is
a good intellectual excercise to have to invent that
wheel and program for it.
Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional
Peter at Berghold dot Net |
| |
Dog trainer, dog agility exhibitor, brewer of
fine Belgian style ales. Happiness is a warm, tired, contented dog curled up at your side and
a good Belgian ale in your chalice. |
