in reply to Breaking The Rules

Limbic~Region,

This is very encouraging to me as a beginner of Perl. I was focusing on not breaking the rules of Perl instead of just using Perl to do what I have to do. I know about "there's more than one way to do it" but I still didn't want to do it the wrong way.

Thanks for writing this. I feel I have permission to use Perl anyway I see fit now :-)

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Re^2: Breaking The Rules
by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on May 30, 2006 at 19:19 UTC
    mikasue,
    Thanks for writing this. I feel I have permission to use Perl anyway I see fit now :-)

    Either I have failed to properly express my intent of this meditation or you have failed to grasp the spirit of it. This isn't a license to ignore what you don't like and do what you want. Let me enumerate the main themes again.

    • 1. First understand why the rule, the exceptions, and the advice exist
    • 2. Review that in context with your problem specific objective
    • 3. Using prudence, explore all the things that could go wrong from continuing to pursue this approach
    • 4. Safe guard yourself against all those known pitfalls
    • 5. Use common sense and learn from your mistakes
    • 6. Remember that your actions may impact more than yourself

    Cheers - L~R

[reply]
      I will definately follow these 6 rules :-) I want to learn Perl the right way. But I don't want my mistakes to hender me from learning it. This meditation says to me it's ok if you break the rules as long as you learn why. Have I got it now?
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Re^2: Breaking The Rules
by jeffa (Bishop) on May 30, 2006 at 19:19 UTC

    Please be careful how you take the advice from the OP -- it is not an excuse to simply do it the wrong way, but rather an excuse to do it the wrong way for yourself so you can better learn how to do it the right way for others.

    jeffa

    L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)
[reply]
      I understand! I wasn't saying I was going to break any rules. I was saying that I wasn't going to stop using Perl to do some programming task now because I'm scared of breaking the rules. As a beginner i'm going to use Perl and if I do it wrong -- learn from it. This mediation help me understand that I shouldn't be soo concerned about doing it wrong that I don't use the language to do it.
[reply]

In Section Meditations