Chip Salzenberg wrote:
>
> According to Adam Turoff:
> > Perl is a greater amplifier than many (most?) languages that precede
> > or follow it.
>
> This is a profound insight. Thank you. [no sarcasm]
Thanks, Chip.
Now for the next obvious question: what do we do about it, if anything?
> > It's the old "with great power comes great responsibility" adage
> > writ large.
>
> But of course. Chainsaws are dangerous in the Real World, too.
Chainsaws are different in that most of us can identify sharp object
and sharp objects moving quickly as being a little dangerous.
The problem with swiss army chainsaws is that there are very many
more opportunities to get hurt using them, not all of them intuitively
obvious to the journeyman programmer. There are best practices in
Perl that are circulating through the community, especially through
books like PCB and EPP as well as Dominus' Tricks of the Wizards and
Advanced Perl talks. (Tom has some content in this vein, but I can't
think of the titles off the top of my head.)
Answering the obvious question above, it seems that the most
important thing for a true Perl advocate to do is to determine
how to make those best practices more well known and show the
people in the outer layers of the Perl Onion how to use Perl's
power responsibly instead of running away from it because it
can be dangerous sometimes.
-- Adam
