And, frankly, I wouldn't use numerical codes to describe stuff. However, say I'm given a set of things in an array and I need to name them according to their position in the array, plus some fixed string. This type of conversion between number and name is very useful. And, this is something I and my coworkers are doing a lot in our current project.

These two meditations were prompted by my helping a coworker of mine learn good programming practices, both in general and in Perl. So, I used the examples I used with her, hoping to get at some generic ideas.

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.