Perl is like creative writing

In Perl, there is more than 1 way to do it, and usually, that’s what gives you the option to make it pretty. It’s like creative writing.

In Java, you’re stuck with the way that the language designers prefer, and it may not be that great for the particular code you’re writing.

But your development team has to get it. The goal is easy to maintain code. You can’t stop on the first iteration of code that meets the requirement. You’re not done yet if it’s still ugly.

I spend a lot of time squashing bugs on a 10 year old code set. On the first pass, my average solution is 20-30 lines of code. I usually check in 5-10 lines by the time I’m done. That’s less risk of change to the system, and 1/2 to 1/3 as much code to support in the future. And it’s pretty.

(okay, this is just my reply to robonperl , but I want to make sure my feed to ironman is working.)