I Dream of Perl

...quite literally.

I've been working on a translation of a text dump of a database into another format, which requires restructuring of the underlying data model, translations of some things, operations on other things, and so forth.

Perl is quite clearly a very good tool for this job, and using it fairly intensively over the past few weeks (and hanging out a bit at the The Monastery) has greatly increased my understanding and appreciation of the language.

On the other hand, I find myself dreaming "in perl" so to speak. Hash refs, array slices, regular expressions and so forth -- in hard to define problems (I'm dreaming, mind you) -- have been the subject of dreams several times over the past week or so.

Anyone else ever experience this?

Comment on I Dream of Perl

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Re: I Dream of Perl by neophyte (Curate) on Nov 24, 2000 at 18:54 UTC
See the node Do you ever dream in code? we only had recently. :) neophyte	[reply]
Re: I Dream of Perl by mrmick (Curate) on Nov 24, 2000 at 18:55 UTC
This happens to me when I really dive into something. It happened when I first started learning Perl and still happens when there is a challenging (read: difficult to impossible) project on my plate. It's not necessarily a bad thing, though... I have often woken up in the middle of the night with a solution that I just have to start working on before I forget it. ummmm........ maybe it is a bad thing, after all... Mick	[reply]
Re: I Dream of Perl by cadfael (Friar) on Nov 24, 2000 at 19:53 UTC
I can't say that I have ever dreamed in Perl, but I have awakened in the middle of the night with a solution to a thorny problem taking shape in my mind. Why should that be? Perhaps because at that instant my mind is cleared of extraneous clutter. This has happened too often to be just a fluke, and I respect it when it occurs -- even to the point of starting my work day at 0300. ----- "Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt"	[reply]
Re: Re: I Dream of Perl by snax (Hermit) on Nov 24, 2000 at 20:54 UTC
I use to do this when I was working on my prob/stats masters -- sometimes at night, sometimes while doing something "recreational" -- and it is wise to follow up on the inspiration when it comes. A couple of times I ignored it and spent a great deal of time "reconstructing" the insight, if it could be reconstructed at all. Right now, though, the problems I face are seldom of the form that sudden insight plays any real part in their resolution. Now that I think about it, that's just a shame :(	[reply]