|
The pic is of my son. He's awesome.
Who I am
Graduated with a BS in CSCI 2001. Went to work for a large corporations's retail group and have been there ever since (I know more about what happens when you spend $$ than any sane person should). I don't code that much anymore, but when I do my languages of choice are perl and C++.
Why I use perl
Well, perl is just fun. I started using perl after I'd been out of school for a couple of years when I needed something more flexible than VB for reporting/automation. I needed something that could interface with Excel and a particular database. Perl, with Win32::OLE and DBI, was perfect for those purposes. Most of what I know about perl I picked up here at PM or have learned in order to solve a problem at work.
What I'm doing with perl now
I'm looking for perl to yet again simplify a process at work. Rather than use the heavy middleware appl stack I currently have for our web-enabled reporting (something akin to using a sledgehammer to put up wall-hangers), I'm trying to learn enough CGI and GD::Graph (not to mention CSS) to implement it strictly in perl.
Why I frequent PM
I've never run across a forum that even came close to the usefulness of this site. The Monks here are not only knowledgeable, but also exceedingly friendly and helpful. I also am a strong believer in learning by teaching. When I take the time to think about how to explain something to someone else, I often realize there's some detail I need to understand better before being able to explain it to someone else.
Nodes/Other stuff I want to remember
Maintaining Local CPAN Patches
Customizing cpan modules
Perl Special Variables Quick Reference
Succinct regex matching rules
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/161872/hidden-features-of-perl
Read Grandfather's nodes. I inevitably learn something when I do.