Perl is a huge part of what I consider "work", but it also pleases me as a quick and dirty scripting language for doing things at home. I couldn't live without my dictionary-website-grabber script, or the script that tells me when the next train leaves. Without Perl, I'd have a hard time converting all sorts of text formats into eachother, both at home and at the office.

Home and work are hard to keep separated if you're a business owner. I often work at home, and do private coding at the office, so I couldn't decide between work and home. I chose "a keyboard" :)

As my job: yes; When I can: yes; In secret: sometimes; For fun: yes; Seriously: rarely; 4am: er, yea; A keyboard: most always.

- Yes, I reinvent wheels.
- Spam: Visit eurotraQ.

It looks great with white wine! FabsBSD

Fortunately my job (Unix Sys Admin) gives me plenty of scope for coding perl during the day light hours. I do have a couple of projects I am working on intermittently at home, however I reserve 4am for sleeping thank-you very much!

--
Life is a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Home - to keep me occupied,

<rant> I really need a job - I've been unemployed since I graduated in June and, although I start a good job in March next year, I'm going out of my mind! It's literally so bad that I applied for a job at the local supermarket stacking shelves - and got rejected because they're not interested in someone who'll only be there for a few months. I now have such a good knowledge of daytime television that I could probably give you each day's listings sans problems.</rant>

IT skills shortage, heh!
Need for science skills, heh!
Any good jobseeker know that these things are not true.

"What this book tells me is that goose-stepping morons, such as yourself, should read books instead of burning them."
       - Dr. Jones Snr, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Once I was on vacation at an island resort in the middle of nowhere. I wasn't even thinking about programming, but an idea for a chunk of code popped into my mind. I had to write it down for later testing, so I found a piece of light-colored driftwood and a twig with a burnt end (from a fire pit on the beach). I wrote code on the driftwood and carried it back to my room to later transcribe onto notebook paper. It wasn't until a couple weeks later that I actually put the code into a computer.

gryphon
code('Perl') || die;

Over the last year I found myself coding in the strangest of places; I was travelling without a PC and relying on net cafes whenever I could find them.

So one time, similar to yours, I had an ahah experience about an abstraction layer for a spidering application -- I fleshed it out in my travel log while spending several days in a dirt floor home in a tribal village in Flores, Indonesia.

Another time I had to patch and release one of my modules while waiting out a rainstorm on the coast of Vietnam from an excruciatingly slow net drop in a local net cafe. I already had to wait to find this cafe, because most of the cafes in Vietnam filter out the ssh protocol, but for some reason this one allowed it.

Hmm, this would make a good root node -- where's the strangest place you've ever coded?

Matt

Hmm, this would make a good root node
Agreed!

where's the strangest place you've ever coded?
In the bathtub with one of those portable little white boards.

I had to laugh (and ++) ... I too have pages from my travel journals filled with diagrams and pseudocode that have popped into my head in unlikely places ... while curled up inside my tent on a rainy Alaska evening or doing things like taking an overnight bus ride to Istanbul ... but your dirt floor tribal home in Flores and sluggish net cafe in Vietnam remind me how much of the world I have yet to see. :-)

        $perlmonks{seattlejohn} = 'John Clyman';

I couldn't decide which one to pick. I write at school (university), home (for fun, seriously and I need a job) work (when I'm employed), at a keyboard and sometimes at 4:00 am. Haven't tried right angles though :)

I think I'll abstain from this poll

I've often wondered why cigarette smokers make a big deal out of nicotine. I quit YEARS ago, before I got out of college, but giving up Perl is like giving up oxygen.

--
tbone1
Ain't enough 'O's in 'stoopid' to describe that guy.
- Dave "the King" Wilson

I am only able to write perl at right angles...

once I tried to do so at about a 135º angle and it resulted in serious harm to 12 people standing within a half mile radius...

let us never speak of that day again...



---

work it harder make it better do it faster makes us stronger more than ever hour after our work is never over.

Not wishing to dredge up painful memories, but I too had a bad experience with obtuse Perl until I discovered the most efficacious Protractor::90&deg; module.
:)

Pssst, buddy, wanna buy some Python?

maybe, if you can throw in a Python2Perl.pl converter

rudif

I am working as a webmaster and I am usually using PHP there, so Perl usually comes in my home time.

Sometimes I think it is sad that Perl is replaced by PHP in the web environment (especially in small projects)

Some of us feel that PHP equals sadness in all cases, but rest assured that when I become the Evil Overlord, the PHP'ers will get a chance to recant. :)

• I code perl at home for fun to get somewhere with my IRC Bot.
  
• I code perl at home seriously because work won't let me have alot of spare time.
  
• I code perl at home, because I need a new job, as this one is stressing me out.
  
• I code perl at 4am cuz the darn bot won't do as I want him to.
  
• I code perl with a keyboard cuz there's no such thing as brain implants yet, that let me think in perl and get it written on the screen.
  

vector -- Perl is coding; Coding is Perl.

I use Perl at work "as my job" ( on occasion ), work - when I can, work - in secret ( or at lunch time ), home for fun, and the occasional 4am unless my wife tells me to come to bed. : )

Biggest problem I have is not getting interrupted when I'm either coding or on PM.

There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling now.

A keyboard, of course.

The smart-ass answers are always the best :)

John J Reiser
newrisedesigns.com

Let us not forget the teachings of http://www.wall.org/~larry/: "Perl isn't an orthogonal language; it's a diagonal language. By which we mean that Perl doesn't force you to always go at right angles." (Camel, sect 1.5 -- I found this via google (where it shouldn't be, so no link) not by inspection, so I'm not sure which ed.)

Maybe I just missed that discussion, but why exactly is caching on Google bad? If it retains copyright info whats the problem?

My point wasn't that google caches it. My point was that the link is to a copyrighted work of Larry Wall et al, via O'Rielly (who quite likely actualy owns the copyright, but I'm too tired and drunk to check), which they have expressedly not given permission to distribte. My complaint isn't at Google, who is just doing their level best to provide relevant search results and related services (which they do very well), but at the people who put a copy of Programing Perl on a publicly-accessable web-site, in voilation of it's copyright. (I suspect the people in question bought a site license for the CD bookshelf or O'Rielly Safari, but I'm quite certianly not at their site.)

---

Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).

I regularly get funny looks and comments while riding on the 63 bus route to and from Birmingham city centre. Seeing as I live over 10 miles out, I usually have plenty of time to do stuff. The funniest comment I've had so far was from a young girl (well twenty-something, which is young for me), who'd seen me a couple of times, and asked all excited, whether I was a novelist writing my next best seller. She was very disappointed when I said 'no I'm a Perl programmer'. If I'd have been single I'd have said 'yes' of course :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Barbie
Birmingham Perl Mongers
Web Site: http://birmingham.pm.org/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

learning Perl one statement at a time

That'll take a while. Not as long as Java, though.

At home, I try lots of stuff because I want to find out how something works. If I know how it works, it doesn't interest me any more, and so I've got many pieces of code at home which are about half-finished...

Best regards,
perl -e "s>>*F>e=>y)\*martinF)stronat)=>print,print v8.8.8.32.11.32"

Hard to tell, as I work at home, and so everything is mixed up. Although coding in Perl is not my primarily occupation, I do care to script in Perl when(ever) I can, but also launch MacPerl for fun and private use (along with AppleScript). So at first glance I couldn't decide which option to pick.

Now, as it is true that I code at a keyword and at 4am I am sleeping, well I picked the keyword option.

-- Ricardo
use MacPerl;

I have also solved a coding problem in my dreams. I wonder if it is common, or should I consult a shrink. Yet another subject for a node.

Johan

Funny thing is that a co-worker mentioned to me yesterday that he solved a problem in his sleep the previous night. So, it may be more common than you think :-)

-- vek --

Wow, this poll can really use multi-selection check boxes.

You mainly write Perl at more than one place?

Oh yeah, :-) I forgot my mantra, "Do not post before finishing caffeinated beverage"

-felonious--

"You kiddin'? I was a star! I could write Perl at any angle. Thirty degrees, thirty-two degrees, you name it. Thirty-one... But I couldn't go on coding once I found out what the programs were for."

Lrrr: "But if this cape shrinks, consider your species extinct!"