One of the strengths Perl has is that it allows one to make many assumptions at a simple level which may not hold when you dig a little deeper. I know from my history of interacting with you that ETOOMUCHMAGIC -- assuming things that do not remain true -- appears to be one of your pet peeves. Yet I think this is one of those situations in which that's what others are doing, and other than annoying you I'm not sure of the harm.

Rules of thumb can be useful. Newton's model was wrong, too, but it's still useful today except when it's not. We can answer people in the frame of reference they bring and note exceptions to watch for later. Those exceptions will be explained as they arise, and the true model can be explained once it's not so daunting. We can alternatively place the question the person asked to the side and explain that their whole understanding of what question to ask was flawed and why that's the case. The latter is probably more correct, but in many instances the former will be less intimidating.

Larry mentions in his talks that Perl is great because the language and the culture allow people to program in baby talk until they are ready to program in a more sophisticated vocabulary and understanding. I think you're striving against that on the basis that it leads to incorrect assumptions between getting useful work done and learning the true hows and whys of the language. I could be mistaken, but that's how I understand your position right now.

In reply to Re^11: Scalar context of slice (vs grep) by mr_mischief
in thread Scalar context of slice by thenaz

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.