perlmeditation
deprecated
I realized several weeks ago that the seventh anniversary of my joining the monastery was coming up. I began writing what became a pretty large missive (which I am not going to post here) that could simply be summed up as "perl has given me more things than a job."
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True enough, I was hired around the same time I joined (and started posting some idiotic questions and answers). Through perl I came into contact with Postgres, and as I flexed my new "muscles" on both those fronts, the depth of my understanding for Solaris and Linux increased. The military has a term: "force multiplier." A multiplier is what it sounds like. A device that provides an advantage to a force, while having advantages which outweigh disadvantages.
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Perl is a force multiplier. To use perl, you must learn. I cannot be more more clear than that. Perl will teach you, whether you like it or not.
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You can do what I did, and make a career of all the things perl taught me, or you could use it as an academic toy (purl on irc.perl.org being an example).
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It's powerful stuff. My current involvement with perl is far removed from the trenches, yet I still find I need it to perform certain tasks (such as poking at RT's database). I don't even know what versionn of perl we have installed, because frankly it is so ubiquitous, the tracking thereof would be difficult. Further, while the perl6-lang list and other places had long-lasting arguments about who got what character and what something should do.
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But, I feel strongly enough about this to swear.
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Guys, it's still fucking perl. Perl is good.
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And I owe an inestimable, even indescribable debt to the users of the Monastery helping when I needed it. I try to give back now and again, and find that every question I come across has at least two correct answers.
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You're (you oldsters) wonderful. Thank you.
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<p>--
<br>Tilly is my hero.
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