I was thinking about TMTOWTDI ...
I started to use Perl 7 years ago. Programming is not my main activity but however a relevant part.
Here at my company we use several languages, but for me since then Perl has become more and more important: for writing scripts to do whatever processing of row files we need to manipulate, to produce shape files, PDF files, to run batches, to administer the network. Also we built some large web applications that integrate GIS and graphical packages, execution of external applications, RSS management, wiki stuff, data transfer, access to SQL databases over the internet... fortunately this has always been paid work.
The interesting thing is that when I come here and I read the postings, I can understand much less than 50% of them. So I feel I really know very few of Perl.
I'm sure we reinvented the wheel several times ( ok, we at least use CGI.pm and XML::Simple :)) ), and I'm sure it was never perfectly round.
But the beauty of Perl is that we always had the work done - whatever it was - with satisfaction of our clients. And our satisfaction: it let's you totally express your creativity.
So thanks Perl and its community here... for what I can understand :))

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Re: I understand TMTOWTDI...
by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on Sep 05, 2007 at 23:23 UTC
    Anonymous Monk,
    "I started to use Perl 7 years ago."

    You have been using Perl 7 for years now? Wow, did it help you build the time machine?

    Yes, I know the sentence should have been parsed as using perl for a duration of 7 years but I think my mistake is much funnier.

    Cheers - L~R

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Re: I understand TMTOWTDI...
by GrandFather (Saint) on Sep 05, 2007 at 20:51 UTC

    Stick around, ask questions about what you don't understand, contribute wheels for a little reshaping - you'll come to understand more and the road will seem smoother. ;)

    DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel
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Re: I understand TMTOWTDI...
by samizdat (Vicar) on Sep 10, 2007 at 13:12 UTC
    Bon-n-n-g-g-g!!!

    Give the (wo?)man a gold star. I have felt the same way many times. Much of my code is simplistic Perl, usually spread out over a lot more space than most would use as I expand each if statement and avoid ternary ops and things like that. Lots of silly parentheses, too. However, it does the job I need it to do and I always get a kick out of the comments from my C coding friends as they say "Wow, you did all that with only this much code?"

    Don Wilde
    "There's more than one level to any answer."
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Re: I understand TMTOWTDI...
by blazar (Canon) on Sep 10, 2007 at 08:26 UTC
    I was thinking about TMTOWTDI ...

    Also see my own On TMTOWTDIness, which spawned an interesting discussion.

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