Re: A "newbies" thoughts on cgi.pm...

[shotgunefx]

I'm all for reinventing wheels to learn or to improve, but you should know what is wrong with the wheel in the first place.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

[xaphod]

I'm amused by that "what's wrong with the wheel" commant so much I may just have to re-use it mysqlf someday

Once upon a time I wrote code with the same mindset as the original poster. But two years ago I stopped using Windows for anything serious. And since then I've learned to trust the work of others, so I'm now able to take that little extra effort to ensure others can trust my code.

So I think the reinventing mindset stems from the fact that with Windows you can never be assured something outside your control will do it's job properly, and that writing what you need is simpler than learning all there is to know.

[shotgunefx]

It's not about trusting other people's work. Admittedly, my feeling is that many coders don't want to use Module::X because they can't figure out what the hell it does.

On the other hand, different people think in different terms. Maybe I want to rewrite Module::X because it doesn't fit the way I think, or to address problems in my situation that are not a problem for the majority of users of Module::X. Or maybe I think I can do a much better job or just want to sharpen my skills.

I started off writing games for the 286/386 mostly on Extended DOS using Rational 4G. I had to create everything myself. Every video card chip with modes above 320x240 worked in a different freaking way (planar/banked/etc). You had to write assembler to drive them all. (Over 8 chipsets when I stopped.) I know the hell of having to write bimodal interrupt handlers that can handle the context switch from real mode to protected mode. It's not a place I every want to go again.

When I found Perl and the huge amount of code on CPAN, I was amazed at how simple it was to build complex and diverse apps in no time flat. So for me, it isn't a matter of trust.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."