Teach 'em the rules now, let 'em break the rules after the learn them

That was my point on particular mailing list. There are far too many new programmers, not just in Perl, that have never been taught good programming. In Perl scripts using warnings and strict helps you in learning some good Perl programming practices.

When writing C programs, I always used 'lint' before compiling and to me warnings and strict are the equivalent. It has taken time, but most Perl programmers I've worked with have gotten used to adding -w/use strict without thinking. In a company I used to work for, they had to port a badly written application to mod_perl. It took several months. The app that I was working on took a couple of weeks to be mod_perl compliant. They have since seen the light :)

Another thing every Perl programmer should be taught is Testing. Its amazing how often the Test:: modules can keep you sane, when all else is driving you nuts with fustration.

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Barbie
Birmingham Perl Mongers
Web Site: http://birmingham.pm.org/
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In reply to Re: (jeffa) 3Re: Things every perl programmer should know? by barbie
in thread Things every perl programmer should know? by licking9Volts

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