Once you're in the habit of using them, ALWAYS, they will do more at a fundamental level to improve the discipline of your programming than anything else I know of!

I have to disagree here. Completely.

I do generally think using warnings and strict is a good idea, especially for people who are relatively new to Perl. I don't, however, think that doing so will improve your programming at a fundamental level at all. In fact, it could be argued that strict and warnings will make you lazier because, well, you don't have to catch those errors if perl is going to catch them for you. More to the point, though, all they can do is help you catch some common errors... like typos, for instance. That's not going to result in programming improvement.

They don't...

• ... help you write better comments.
• ... help you pick better function/variable names.
• ... help you design better data structures.
• ... help you choose better algorithms.
• ... help you avoid logic errors.
• ... help you improve the structure of your code.
• ... etc.

I agree that they are useful tools but that's it.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

Well, I think use strict; does usually help to improve the structure of the code. If only because you have to think whether you want something to be global or local (lexical). Sure, you can declare all your variables on top of your script with "my" and keep all the bad habits, but it's somewhat less likely to happen then if you don't start using strict at all.

So it's not going to make your code magically better, but it's going to nag you to make it better yourself.

Jenda


XML sucks. Badly. SOAP on the other hand is the most powerfull vacuum pump ever invented.

The only things they do help with are generally the problems that are easiest to fix anyway.

Agreed.  But those problems that are "easiest to fix" become so only after you've reached a certain state of enlightment with Perl.  My point is that you start out miles ahead by using these tools, and they give you invaluable habits which stick with you.  Furthermore, all of the very good bullet items you list are, in my opinion, things that you develop along the path to programming (be it Perl or any language).  I think we can both agree that nobody has a panacea for obtaining them in a short time.

It's also true that the tools warnings and strict are most necessary for the beginning Perl programmer.  But, having said that, I'm not going to give them up anytime soon.  (:

Miles ahead? I think you have a long way to go if you think that just adding "use strict" and "use warnings" gives you such a headstart.

I always use warnings and strict (and know when to turn it off), but I've always considered them to be in the same class as the lights on my dashboard to remind me that the handbrakes are on, or that my oil level is low. Useful, but they don't make me a better driver. And they don't prevent accidents either.

Perl --((8:>*

See What's_wrong_with_-w_and_$^W in perllexwarn.

Many people still use -w and for good reason. Some people like turning on warnings globally. Yes, it can be a good thing if you want that behavior. I am tired of people bashing it.

Many big corporations with home-grown Perl modules still use the -w flag and wouldn't want it any other way.

Many people still use -w and for good reason. Some people like turning on warnings globally. Yes, it can be a good thing if you want that behavior. I am tired of people bashing it.

Well then I doubt you'll like to hear this: It doesnt actually work as you say it works. -w doesn't turn on warnings everywhere. It turns on warnings everywhere UNLESS a module or code uses lexical warnings. So if the module has "no warnings" then thats what happens.

Maybe you meant -W?

---
$world=~s/war/peace/g

I agree that -w is still useful if that's what you really want and you are willing to accept the consequences. However, I've seen that in many, many cases, it is used out of ancient habit even when it's not the most appropriate. Using it together with warnings shows some of this confusion: if you want global warnings you just need -w, and if you want lexical warnings you just need warnings. If you use both, it's because you don't know what you want, or you don't understand the difference.

(Note, here "you" is used as a generic pronoun, not refering to any specific person).

Thanks for pointing that out, itub.  I admit that I still use -w out of my original force of habit, and have yet to include a module which complains because of it.  Certainly, I would prefer to be required to turn warnings off globally if I knew I had to, rather than the opposite.  But I can see where, as my usage of modules increases, I may need to occasionally give up my predilection for the global -w.

Stop using prototypes.

Yes, I am serious.

Can you explain why?

Without prototypes, the following two calls are equivalent:

sub ratio_change {...}
my @args = ($start_value, $start_total, $new_value, $new_total);
ratio_change @args;   # Same result as:
ratio_change $start_value, $start_total, $new_value, $new_total;
[download]

But with prototypes, they aren't:

sub ratio_change ($$$$) {...}
my @args = ($start_value, $start_total, $new_value, $new_total);
ratio_change @args;   # Eeks. Won't do what you think it does.
ratio_change $start_value, $start_total, $new_value, $new_total;
[download]

I don't shy away totally from using prototypes, but the only types I use are:

sub foo ();
sub foo ($);
sub foo (&@);
sub foo (\@@);
sub foo (\%@);
[download]

that is, I purely use prototypes to tell the parser how to parse things. I don't use it for argument checking (which is the typical use for '$$$$' style prototypes) as that get annoying fast - due to '$''s side effect of creating scalar context.
Perl --((8:>*

I'm not sure that's true, for programmers, or for authors, either.

From a career point of view, hiring an editor makes you a better writer, in the sense that your career will improve. Without one, you'll probably never get hired; it's very hard to see your own typos and spelling mistakes, and if you publish a newspaper full of typos and spelling mistakes, no one will take you seriously. Worse yet, you'll re-inforce your mistakes, and learn bad spelling.

A spelling and grammer checker don't quite equal a good copy editor, but they're a decent first order approximation. Not using them will only hurt.

Similarly, using strictness and warnings are a good first step towards good coding practices. No, they don't help you directly with your program content, but they help you make sure you spend your time writing content, and less time editing for correctness.

Now that you mention grammar checkers, the following analogy suddenly occured to me: strict is to a spellchecker as warnings is to a grammar checker.

In which sense? In my experience, both strict and the spelling checker point out real problems at least 90% of the time, making them highly effective and not too annoying. But warnings and the grammar checker are right less than 50% of the time, which can make them too annoying. ;-)

    my $text = "Ratio Change:  %7.4f => %7.4f\n", $ratio0, $ratio1;
[download]

    Ratio Change:  %7.4f => %7.4f
[download]

Edit by castaway - Swapped a tags for id:// links