Joel Berger

By now most people who would be reading my blog are aware of the kerfuffle going on about people being pushy about strict (and other Modern Perlisms).

As a relatively new Perler (my first scripts are dated 2009) I believe I have an underrepresented opinion on the matter. I was lucky to have had StackOverflow and the community around me as I was learning Perl. Someone, I don’t remember who or with what tone, told me that I should use strict and warnings on my code. Not knowing any better, I did.

Then Perl was easier. Simple as that.

I have learned a lot since then. I know when I need to no strict 'refs' or no warnings 'once'. Personally I wish these pragmas were default. In fact, I have had so little problem with Perl that I’m horrendous at the debugger; I really haven’t needed it. Of course I know that one of Perl’s best assets is its compatibility, and therefore strict/warnings is not default.

And yes, I get annoyed now when some new Perler asks on StackOverflow and didn’t use strict, but then I take a deep breath, remind myself I was there, right there, myself.

And yes, I get annoyed when people comment on my blog posts with self-righteous bull, but then I take a deep breath and realize that they might know lots more than me about a great many things.

Open source programming is an incredible social experiment. Many people are working together. We haven’t all met, we don’t even all speak the same language. Often we are not paid. But together we can make incredible products. Then usually we give them away, to help other people.

Think about how awesome that is. Then go explain why you do the things you do to a new Perler.