I was just noting the comments to "CSV File Question" when this hit me...

Sometimes I think that a technically competant sociologist or psychologist (yes, they're very different, I know that - they'd come up with different conclusions) could have an absolute field day studying Perl developers. On one hand, we have these wonderfully elaborate general solutions (e.g., Text::CSV, ... DBI, CGI, and most other CPAN modules) which can elegantly (and sometimes quickly) handle anything thrown at them in a broad development domain.

On the other hand, we see people who don't think twice about solving an exact problem with no thought about changing inputs, assuming a very, very narrow domain. Please don't vote this down because you think I'm flaming here - I'm not. This can be a very valid one-off solution when you only need to do a one-time conversion of data - I've written a reasonable share of these tools myself, and many of them were exactly the right solution for the cheapest possible cost in the currency of time.

On the third hand, we get Perl golfers. Though I've never been good at this type of challenge, this isn't a flame either - it's quite fascinating what some people can do given way too much time on their hands :-)

I really think that both sociologists and psychologists could have an absolute field day trying to explain all ends of the spectrum, and everything in between.

In reply to "people watching" by Tanktalus

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