I guess the methodologies and all this stuff was discussed sufficiently by others so I'll add just a few shameless plugs :-)

1) I agree it's very nice to have some kind of interactive interface to Perl for testing tiny snipets of code. I don't really like the perl -de1 hack os I also wrote my own interactive interface allowing me to enter more lines at once and so for. You can find it on my page. It evaluates the code only after you enter a line that ends with a semicolon, allows you to execute external commands or print the value of something, allows you to paste whole subroutines without trying to eval them in pieces (in here-doc like syntax) and so forth. I find it most helpfull. (Yes I know there is some completely unrelated PSH on CPAN. My PSH was released first, but I did not get the namespace registered with modules@cpan.org and didn't upload without registration.)

2) The backups. Of course you should not write anything without a version control system, but of course you can't check in every single change. Having to remember to make a backup every time you make some change is tedious and not all editors will do that for you. In case you are using Windows you may find my watch_dirs.pl helpfull. The script will backup everything you change in the directory every time you save it. Of course you'd better make sure you do not forget to turn this off ;-)

Jenda
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
   -- Rick Osborne

Edit by castaway: Closed small tag in signature