Re: Re: Rules of Proper Perl Style

Rule 1, don't call them rules. =) Guidelines is a much better term.

Amen! TMTOWTDI, for just about any vaule of "It."

I'll add a plug for my favorite short read on writing literate Perl here. Some of you might recognize the author.
:-)

And as for adding guidelines:

Comment your data structures,
And use good, long, descriptive variable names.

Bonus points for anyone who can remember who it was that said "show me your data structures, and I don't need to see your algorithms..." or something like that.

Peace,
-McD

Comment on Re: Re: Rules of Proper Perl Style

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(Quote source) Re: Re: Re: Rules of Proper Perl Style by dws (Chancellor) on Feb 13, 2001 at 04:00 UTC
That'd be Fred Brooks. The exact quote is "Show me your code and conceal your data structures, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your data structures, and I won't usually need your code; it'll be obvious." Kinda hard to believe now, but back in the days when we had to shovel coal to power our mammoth steam-belching, card fed computers, procedural code was the order of the day. The idea of organizing code around "data structures" was a strange one.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Rules of Proper Perl Style by Anonymous Monk on Feb 13, 2001 at 04:28 UTC
Frederick P. Brooks's -- The Mythical Man-Month "Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I'll continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious."	[reply]
Re (tilly) 4: Rules of Proper Perl Style by tilly (Archbishop) on Feb 13, 2001 at 09:55 UTC
Sorry dws, the masked stranger is right. This is from the last section of chapter 9. The full paragraph is: Much more often, strategic breakthrough will come from redoing the representation of the data or tables. This is where the heart of a program lies. Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Rules of Proper Perl Style by petral (Curate) on Feb 15, 2001 at 07:45 UTC
Oddly enought, the "short read on writing literate Perl here", mentioned at the start of this thread, includes the following: "Rob Pike says: `Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming. (See Brooks p. 102.)'" We all seem to be dipping our toes in the same stream :-) p update: That "toes in stream" was the best I could come up with at that moment. shoulda/coulda been: "Which only goes to prove the point."	[reply]