(In no particular order ...)

• How do I find things out?
  • online docs, perldoc, grep
  • people
  • mailing lists
  • usenet
  • websites
  • search engines
  • books
  • which to use when, and how to use them effectively
• how to deal with people
  • how to ask a sensible question
  • how to become part of a community, and the value of doing so
  • what information to include
  • what information not to include
  • choosing a subject
  • asking in the right place
  • following up
• How to debug a program
  • warnings
  • strict
  • the test suite
  • adding temporary diagnostics
  • modules: diagnostics, Carp, Data::Dumper, Devel::Peek
  • the debugger
  • the source code
  • knowing the style of code you write
  • see "How do I find things out" above
• How to think when writing a program
  • top down: how to decompose a problem into smaller parts
  • bottom up: routines you know you'll need
  • middle out: write the hard bit first
  • OO: what are the objects?
  • making things readable
  • making things reusable
  • refactoring
  • (many others, pick what's suitable ...)

Hugo

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.