Re^3: In Need of Mentoring

[qazwart]

It's both. As I pointed out, perlbool teaches people who want to learn object oriented programming to use var and use @ISA. If I look at Perldoc, there's use parent. And, at one time I was told this is how you create a constant:

    *PI = \3.14159;
    our $PI;

Now we have use constant.

And, there is a fashion in coding just as much as there is in the dresses in Vogue. We use to tell people to parenthesize everything because it was more readable. Now, we tell people to eliminate unnecessary parentheses because it clutters code and makes it less readable. Variable names use to be camelCase, now we are suppose to use underscores. And, what is the best way to do an infinite loop? Do you use for(;;) or while (1)

Or should that be while ( 1 ) ; because the style is now to leave a space around parentheses and various punctuation marks because it's more readable. However, when I was learning C, I was told to get rid of spaces around parentheses because it made my code harder to read.

I'm just happy I never learned about use English; until I was told that it shouldn't be used because it makes your programs run slower and it doesn't really make your programs more readable anyway.

[BrowserUk]

Or should that be while ( 1 ) ; because the style is now to leave a space around parentheses and various punctuation marks because it's more readable. However, when I was learning C, I was told to get rid of spaces around parentheses because it made my code harder to read.

From what you've said, you've been programming long enough to have formed your own opinion. Have you?

One of the lessons I learnt quite early on in my career -- thanks to a boss (and mentor) who favoured independent thought over group-think -- was that I should arrive at my own conclusions rather than accepting received wisdom. His words were (roughly):

Listen to others arguments -- when they can be separated from opinion -- but draw your own conclusions.

That has stood the test of time -- nearly 25 years -- and continues to serve me well.

It allows me to perceive group-think; badly justified 'rules'; the latest greatest fads; and preserved-in-aspic dogma; for what they are: lazy thinking and/or born-again over-corrections. Let your own powers of reason be your guide.

[chromatic]

It's both.

The engineering part of programming allows us to learn from our mistakes. Things we did back in the '90s in Perl turned out to be more trouble than they're worth. Similarly things done in the '00s. I'm sure we'll look back on stuff done in the '10s with the same disdain, but if we're learning and evaluating based on what we've learned, I think we have a reasonable chance to improve.