Either I have failed to properly express my intent of this meditation or you have failed to grasp the spirit of it. This isn't a license to ignore what you don't like and do what you want. Let me enumerate the main themes again.

• 1. First understand why the rule, the exceptions, and the advice exist
• 2. Review that in context with your problem specific objective
• 3. Using prudence, explore all the things that could go wrong from continuing to pursue this approach
• 4. Safe guard yourself against all those known pitfalls
• 5. Use common sense and learn from your mistakes
• 6. Remember that your actions may impact more than yourself

I will definately follow these 6 rules :-) I want to learn Perl the right way. But I don't want my mistakes to hender me from learning it. This meditation says to me it's ok if you break the rules as long as you learn why. Have I got it now?

Please be careful how you take the advice from the OP -- it is not an excuse to simply do it the wrong way, but rather an excuse to do it the wrong way for yourself so you can better learn how to do it the right way for others.

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

I understand! I wasn't saying I was going to break any rules. I was saying that I wasn't going to stop using Perl to do some programming task now because I'm scared of breaking the rules. As a beginner i'm going to use Perl and if I do it wrong -- learn from it. This mediation help me understand that I shouldn't be soo concerned about doing it wrong that I don't use the language to do it.