note
extremely
I learned Perl because one of the programmers at our new ISP (back in 1996) told me I might like it better than shell scripts. He said, "I think it will fit the way you think."
<p>A year later, he was calling me for advice when he was tinkering in Perl. By that time I'd already been dispensing advice (not always good advice...) for months. <a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?&selm=50g24l%24mjh%40ha2.ntr.net">My first post to CLPM on google</a> helps date me.
<p>I would have remained a hobbyist if not for the fact that that progammer left the company right about the same time I felt the need to have a major project done for my department (I was Tech Support Manager.) I turned in my massive project document only be told there wasn't any web programmer anymore. So I sucked it down and accepted their offer to give up management to code.
<p>As to the second question, I waffle from elegance to efficiency. Things that just need to get done, I do in a scrappy manner. Things that are going to get used over and over buy more attention up front. I try to be meta-efficient by not overworking unimportant code.
<p>The key lesson I've learned is to never give a single thought to how fast something will be. Figure out if it will work at all, first. The time I've seen wasted on over-optimizing code for speed (code that adds barely 1% to the run time in hindsight, at its worst) would amount to more man-hours than I've spent actually programming.
<p>I, personally, have wasted too much time on more than one project in pursuit of beauty. Over optimizing for purity is as bad as pre-optimizing for speed.
<p><i>-- <br>
$you = new YOU;<br>
honk() if $you->love(perl)</i>
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