It's so easy to add features to Perl scripts that it's easy to become obnoxious and pushy and act like your software is the most important thing on the box.

But then, once you trip over yourself in such a situation, isn't it also the case that it's usually very easy to tweak said Perl scripts so that they play nice, do the right thing, make difficult things possible, etc etc?

I don't know what ClearCase VOBs are, or what they have to do with perl scripts or ease of programming, but if there's a script that's causing trouble for you, there's probably just a couple extra lines of code you could add so that it still does what you want it to do, without causing that trouble.

Of course it's possible that a given coding style would be, for some reason, an obstacle to that sort of easy repair, but that's more a matter of the programmer's chosen coding style -- okay, blame Perl for allowing that programmer to believe that the chosen style was "okay", in the sense that it "worked" (the first few times)...

But is that really Perl's fault? Many consider Perl's tolerant, forgiving nature a feature rather than a problem; on balance, the benefit tends to outweigh the risk, and when you end up on the wrong end of that balance, you just have to learn. And learning is good, right? Go on, admit it: your experience has made you a better programmer, hasn't it?

In reply to Re: Perl is too blankety-blank easy! by graff
in thread Perl is too blankety-blank easy! by samizdat

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.