[Melbourne-pm] Slides from last Melb.PM

[Jacinta Richardson]

> So, given that I have been to none yet (wednesday is a bad day for me):

:(  Well, if Wednesday becomes better do drop in, our talks are usually 
lots of fun.  :)

> In the `use strict' talk:
> 
> So how many people put up their hands in the respective "who do" and "who
> don't" questions? :)

We have very good Perl programmers in Melbourne PM so this question has 
lead to some people admitting that for one line perl -e solutions they 
don't use strict and other than than I think everyone says they do.

Mind you, I'd had to be the single person who doesn't use strict in a 
room of decent Perl prgrammers.  ;)

> Bah to people who don't teach their students about why -w and `use strict'
> are Your Friend.

Most of it seems to be a problem when the person is self taught.  None 
of the Perl documentation, the camel book or the llama book assume 
you'll be using strict.  I don't know when merlyn mentions it but its 
not in the first chapter. The first Perl code examples in the camel 
doesn't use my... if people start by learning bad habits they'll 
continue.  There are things you can do to avoid creating the errors that 
strict and warnings pick up.  These things involve more effort but if 
you don't use strict and warnings then it's something you just learn to 
do.  After that you're inclined to believe that there's nothing that 
strict and warnings can do to help you, because you already know how to 
identify and avoid those errors yourself.

We teach with strict and warnings from the word go and still have 
students who see it as a lot of bother they shouldn't need...  mostly 
those students who've learned a little Perl before.

So bah, sure, but that's bahing at our book writers and the students 
themselves.

All the best,

        Jacinta

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