Food and Programming are similar on lots of levels. One of these is the cookbook. There are probably two types of cooks/programmers those who learnt how to cook from their mother or a professional (chef/teacher) and those who have learnt from books. For myself, when I started to cook I really relied on a cookbook to teach me how (Delia Smith is a cookbook goddess). As I progressed I grew to rely less on cookbooks and would often knock up a meal without reference to a cookbook with a restricted set of ingredients. Much in the same way that I have found my programming changing ...

From time to time it is good to go back to the books or back to your mentor so that you can learnt a new technique that then enriches your cooking. However the real skill comes in having a broad tool box of skills and ingredients, and the knowledge of these ingredients so that you can combine then to produce particularly pleasing solutions to problems.

One obvious difference is that a badly cooked meal rarely comes back to haunt you months later. Well, I suppose if it is a particularly badly cooked meal it can be fatal whereas hopefully your Perl never is that serious....

Thanks for a good thought provoking post and making me think about how I can progress my programming further.