This afternoon I finished making a few changes in my code, including changing a temporary filename into a temporary filehandle. Once the caller and the callee were changed, I ran the tests for that chunk of code, and as expected all tests passed. I celebrated for a microsecond, then got on with the next thing.
Later, a Google searched landed me on PM, and out of habit I read a few nodes, and your post reminded me once again that Perl has an outstanding software engineering framework. Before I became a PM regular, tests were a Software QA thing that didn't involve me. Now, developing code without tests gives me an uneasy feeling, like driving anywhere without my seat-belt fastened.
I know I owe a lot to this terrific community. I'm a way better developer since going to YAPC and joining this group.
And ten years ago I was using a Windows 98 box, editing locally and ftp'ing the files to the Debian server I was developing for, so terrified was I of vim. My latest project is a second NFS server with dual 1T drives. Ten years is a yawning chasm of change.
Alex / talexb / Toronto
"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds