If you want to write your own book where you tell novices "Include these three to seven magic lines at the start of every program you write, but don't worry if you don't understand them, they're really important, trust me, and yes I meant every program you write!"
You must misunderstand me.

If I say my boilerplate is: 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

[download]
I don't intend to write that as: 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use
strict
;
use
warnings
;

[download]
Three lines is just 3 lines. Not 7.

As for explaining, I rather explain the benefits of "use strict" and "use warnings" then "oh, just download this magical thingy from the internet, written by some dude, who will tell you just to trust him and use the magical thingy everywhere".

In my years as a trainer, I never explained things away with "oh, this is just a magical thing which I won't explain, just trust me, use it". I'm not that lousy.

In reply to Re^6: RFC: How to succeed with your Perl homework by JavaFan
in thread RFC: How to succeed with your Perl homework by angiehope

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.