[oak perl] O'Reilly Books?

[Joe Brenner]

Quinn Weaver <quinn at fairpath.com> wrote:

> Joe Brenner wrote:
> > Quinn Weaver <quinn at fairpath.com> wrote:

> > > Perl Best Practices is indispensable.
> > 
> > Well... it's really, really good anyway.
> > 
> > (Whenever Damien recommends a module, I wonder what the 
> > gotcha is *this* time.  Usually they break the debugger 
> > or something.)
> 
> I didn't say he actually _followed_ the best practices. :-)
> 
> Also, I now favor Class::InsideOut over Class::Std.
> 
> But most of what he has to say is solid.

Well, if I were working for a boss who told me to use Conway as a coding
standard, I wouldn't complain -- in fact I'd be overjoyed at finding 
such an enlightened employer. 

But really, I have some problems with a significant chunk of his
recommendations, and some of them are pretty big problems:

(1) Class::Std isn't

(2) I like interspersed pod better than pod-at-the-bottom style.
It isn't perfect, but has some strong DRY advantages, and Conway's 
argument against seems very anecdotal (perhaps closer to "personal 
taste").

In general, whenever he mentions an approach I haven't tried yet 
(e.g. exception objects), I don't feel like I can just take his word for
it.  He's "the mad scientist of perl", you can't expect him to come up
with sane ways of doing things.