http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=202171

Last month, I began a computer science degree. I quit my job and everything. I'm so much happier in this life. Its interesting, and most importantly, challenging.

One of the classes I am forced to take is trying to teach me perl. Damn. Too bad I know perl better than the prof. Today, he admitted that yesterday he learned what my does. Ouch. After three days of lectures, he mentioned use strict. OUCH!.

We got into an arguement during class. He was saying that

#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; $a=3; print $d; ------------------ Global symbol "$d" requires explicit package name at wrong.pl line 4. Execution of wrong.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
wouldn't generate an error, because it's ok to assign to varriables that haven't been declared. Nope. That's what warnings is for. My response was that $a is a special variable for sort. He didn't believe me, until I suggested that he change it to
#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; $e=3; print $d; --------------------------- Global symbol "$e" requires explicit package name at wrong.pl line 3. Global symbol "$d" requires explicit package name at wrong.pl line 4. Execution of wrong.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
It was gratifying to see him change his code and execute this little snippet. (Laptop connected to a digital projector for the class to watch what happens. I like it.) but I don't think I should have to do this. I'm paying a lot of money for this class, only to have to correct the prof. ARGH! He's a great prof. I'm not trying to be mean to him. I just get very frustrated about simple stuff like this. I'm quite happy that he has created an atmosphere where I'm comfortable challenging him like this.

I'm very greatful to perlmonks for helping me understand Perl. I don't think I could learn perl from this class. At least, I doubt I would have learned nearly as much as I have here over the last two years. Ahhh... Now that I feel better...