1. All rules are guidelines, including this one;
  2. Always use strict and use warnings;
  3. use constant is your friend;
  4. Regexes are bad, you can often use another way to do it;
  5. While there are many ways to do it, most of them are wrong;
  6. Anyone listing rules for programmers is wrong;
  7. Documentation is for users, comments for developers. You will be a user of your own code, so selfishness compels you to write both;
  8. Tests aren't as necessary as the testing cabal would have you believe;
  9. Tea is the one true source of caffeine;
  10. It's OK to reinvent the wheel sometimes;
  11. There will always be last-minute additions
My second rule is really just a variation on "turn on the fascism options in your compiler; and if the compiler emits warnings that's because your code is broken". My third rule is a special case of general good practice regarding naming conventions.

In reply to My top ten by DrHyde
in thread top ten things every Perl hacker should know by apotheon

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