My very first programming job was for a small company that did audiovisual filmstrips for schools. Remember those films that were just a bunch of still that you advanced at the beep from the tape back in 5th grade? This place made them.

Well, the owner had a great idea for computer aided discussion of topic materials and also computer testing with a purpose to increase retention of the material. So far, so good.

The guy never really understood computers.

Every day the spec would change. Needs would change from sequencial access to files to random access, in programming languages that made a much bigger brouhaha about it then Perl. And that's just a tame example.

The design spec would go through revisions daily. And since he was the boss and paying me hourly, he felt justified. And since it was my first programming job and I didn't know better, I let him.

Just to link this back to Perl, I guess what he had me do I could reproduce in about a week or two in Perl. Of course, I'm many years wiser, and I would take the bloody design document out of his hand, but it really would of been a good fit.

=Blue
...you might be eaten by a grue...