Again I state that PBP is a wonderful book. That doesn't mean I agree with everything in it. Sometimes, like on the issue of using /smx by default, I even think that PBP gives bad advice.

Damian got an overall concensus on his thoughts and solutions

Concensus requires much more than any single person...

To imply that somehow he has destroyed discussion because of the title and being an authorative figure is being dishonest. There is nothing there that prevents you from writing your own book except your own motivations, skill as a writer and a someone to publish your book.

I said that PBP at least partly destroyed freedom and discussion, and stand by that. It's become much harder to program in your own favourite style. Many businesses adopted PBP fully because it's much easier to pick a book than to think about things yourself.

I've never had to defend that I don't use /xms, I've never had to defend that I don't use inside-out objects, I've never had to defend that I use normal Perl constants, I've never had to defend that I want to keep source filters out of production code at all cost. But now, all these things require a lot of discussion in which usually the conclusion is predetermined because it's printed in a book written by an authorative person.

I believe that this was never Damian's intent, but that doesn't change that PBP has in fact taken away some of the Perl fun for me.

If I wanted to align my code along such strict and sometimes silly guidelines, there are other programming languages that would be much better for me.

I think a book like PBP is really great, but that PBP takes things too far. WAY too far. But it's still a wonderful book that many people can learn a lot from.

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