in reply to In Defense of Smart::Comments

Is that merely an ad hominem attack? Or is his track record so bad that one presumes his stuff will eventually blow up?

This strikes me as pretty strange. Apart from TimToady, merlyn, and a handful of others like audreyt there is none more respected and admired than TheDamian.

Smart::Comments is something I've looked at now and then and frankly your example shows me why I'm glad I never sunk any time into hacking with it. It is completely unclear what the sample does just from looking at it. I can read any Test::More and Log::Log4perl or even Test::Class -- or even Test::Inline for that matter -- code and understand it immediately without consulting the docs. I also personally dislike any formatting constraints to make code work ### Even that.

I'm not coming out against Smart::Comments. If you like, great! Just saying I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to not choose and it seems a rather roundabout way of replacing other tools which are in wider use and translate across languages, frameworks, and platforms much more transparently.

(update: fixed log4perl link.)

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Re^2: In Defense of Smart::Comments
by Xiong (Hermit) on May 31, 2010 at 10:58 UTC

    It strikes me as pretty strange, too. Yet this is a common CB reaction to mention of S::C. I've read it enough times; I felt it required an answer.

    Personally, I don't find DC short on hubris. I admire the bravery of a man who says flatly, in print on paper, "Use 78-column lines." I've been in places in Cupertino where that would start a fight involving thrown bar stools. I like him even better when he backs up his flat imperatives with pages of solid reasoning.

    DC takes risks; he pushes Perl to the edge. Sometimes he wins; when he does, he wins big. Occasionally, he flops, to scale. I don't see that as a problem but perhaps some do.

    Certainly, I don't say everyone must use S::C. Here, I'm not even recommending it (much). It works for me (to a point); it works well enough that I'm now investing effort improving/extending it. But this node merely says, "Smart::Comments is not evil."

    - the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne -
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Re^2: In Defense of Smart::Comments
by Anonymous Monk on May 31, 2010 at 05:06 UTC
    there is none more respected and admired than TheDamian.

    As much as he is admired, his modules are his toys, they're under documented and under maintained. Once he is bored with them, because he is so clever, the bugs in his modules can be very difficult to fix.

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      the bugs in his modules can be very difficult to fix.
      Not true. It can be very difficult to have him patch and release an update of his module, but he has no problems letting others take over maintainance of his modules.

      Go ahead, volunteer to maintain Smart::Comments and apply any fix you want.

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