I think its reasonable to assume that the person who has to maintain your code is at least an average Perl programmer. The purpose of coding, commenting, and documentation isn’t to teach Perl to beginners.

That's making a vastly unwarranted assumption.

Look at the most junior person who is (not "should be, if only my boss would listen", but who is) assigned to maintain perl code: and always ensure that they will be able to read what you write.

An expert can always decipher simple code; a novice often can't decipher "clever code". Programmer time is expensive: don't waste it. Even if it takes 10% longer to simplify your code style (and it probably doesn't, if you're good): it's probably just plain cheaper to write code maintainable by the novice, unless it's going to incur a business cost in terms of performance (unlikely, but possible in some cases). Remember, senior programmer time is expensive: anything that someone lower paid can do is (a) work you're not tied up with, and (b) puts available resources to work productively.

In short, do what's right for your company: not what fits your preconceptions of what a programmer "should be". They're often not the same thing at all...

In reply to Re^3: top ten things every Perl hacker should know by Anonymous Monk
in thread top ten things every Perl hacker should know by apotheon

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