It's tough to say something EVERY WEEK

Man! This is harder than I thought. I don't have any trouble blogging about my racing pigeon training or my catch-all blog (that has revolved around beekeeping lately) . I've got ideas for a couple of other blogs too. But, what to say about my baby-talk Perl that won't be ridiculed? Well, one thing, in response to the co-workers who said "Perl is dead", I thought this news about the new Android phone using Perl spoke for itself!

Am I the only one NOT using "strict"?

An old friend came to town the other day. He's quite a Perl guru. Like me, he was a Perl user prior to Perl 5 and I figured he'd be someone who, like me, NEVER uses 'use strict'; in their code. I was wrong! Man, that's one of the things I like about Perl. It'll let me ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Drive without a seat belt. Go swimming in less than 30 minutes after I've eaten or even run with scissors! I know! I know! These are not good ideas - but short cuts seldom are. It's the price you pay and as long as you know the risks, it's nice that Perl lets you use a variable that has not been declared or invoke $_ with the notion that both Perl and yourself know what you're talking about (in that context). I like that freedom. I guess the other side of the coin is you're also allowed to add "use strict" and "use warnings". I'm just glad it's not the default (yet).

"Parrot even runs BASIC programs"

This might be old news but I was recently told "Parrot even runs BASIC programs". However, when I went looking for examples - I found none. All of the references were from 2002 or so. Then I ran across this: "Parrot BASIC — For the Parrot virtual machine; V 1.0 is modeled on GW-BASIC, V 2.0 is modeled on Microsoft QuickBASIC version 4.5." (see Parrot BASIC under the list of BASIC dialests on Wikipedia.) Wow! I'm probably the only one who would think that was really, really cool! I switched TO Perl from QuickBASIC 4.5! Does anyone know of some good examples of running BASIC programs through Parrot?