G'day pryrt,

By quoting me out of context — by removing the leading "please" — you've turned what was intended as politeness into what looks like a harsh command. Your first sentence, which includes "don't be too hard on people", strengthens that (incorrect) perception.

There's a lot of poor code posted by CPAN authors; this doesn't mean that it should be blindly followed in cargo-cult fashion.

The code in the SYNOPSIS of GD, to which you linked, does indeed use indirect syntax. It also has five package variables. I'd be reasonably confident that "please don't use package variables, use lexical ones instead" would not be greeted with "don't be too hard on people".

Furthermore, module POD (and even perldoc code) is generally intended as an example. It's not littered with strictures, error checking, data validation, and so on. It is meant to show the guts of what's needed; not Perl Best Practices or anything like that.

Bod has been here almost a year; he'll celebrate his first Monkday on Monday week. In that time, he's shown an extraordinary eagerness to learn. I applaud this attitude and, wherever possible, I've attempted to help him. There was nothing intentionally negative in what I wrote and, if you look at his reply, you'll see he took no offence (and, in fact, thanked me).