One trick I use is to write the comments first. This will focus you on what you need to be doing and not getting bogged down in the nitty gritty of making it work.

Also start small. Once you have the concept of what you need to do clear in your mind, find a small part of it that you can get working. Then build on that adding in small increments, always making sure everything is working as you envisioned before adding on, this way a large complex task can be made doable.

Perl helps enormously in this process. I have had to work in VB in the past. In VB you do things Bill's way or its the highway. I always managed to get things done in VB but it felt like swimming in mud. With Perl I do things the way I think they should work and more often than not it does work.

In reply to Re: How do you program (again)? by NateTut
in thread How do you program (again)? by wazoox

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.