> -----Original Message----- > From: Perrin Harkins [mailto:perrin@;elem.com] > Sent: 01 November 2002 18:43 > To: Tony Bowden > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [O] Re: Yahoo is moving to PHP ?? > > > Tony Bowden wrote: > > >It sounds like you're saying that you should only use a > subset of Perl > >as some programmers may not understand the other parts of it? > > > > That is what I'm saying. I'm aware that this is a controversial > opinion in the Perl world. However, I think it's reasonable to > know your audience and write for them. That's the good part of > More Than One Way. > The New York Times writes their articles for a certain reading > level, and I do the same with my code. > snip... > - Perrin > >
Have to agree 100% with Perrin - in my experience, refactoring for performance is often used as an excuse for 'rewrite in my style', and at this point, future maintainability is usually severly compromised. Someone decides to replace all foreach loops with map, because this is more advanced and kewl. Does anyone else here remember the COBOL construct ALTER GOTO? I knew a chap who styled himself 'Super Hot Software Systems', whose favourite thing was ALTER GOTO - mmmm he soon got told where to go to! Look it up - it's a nightmare. Another time, a contractor working for me complained bitterly about someone elses obtuse code and lack of comments - the other party said 'Why don't you scroll up?', which he did - lo and behold, about two pages of beautiful comment. Mmmm as he read the comments, from the top, the complainant highlighted each line [easier to read] and when he understood the point of it all, pressed Enter - not realising that this replaced two screens of comment with an empty line... ah ha! we finally figured out the answer to the song: 'Where have all the comments gone?' 8-)
