Monday, August 17, 2009

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).
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6 comments:

  1. hobbifiedAugust 17, 2009 at 3:05 PM

    It's your life you're wasting. Anything that strict doesn't let you do is something that you don't *want* to do 99.44% of the time, but is easy to do by accident. Anything that triggers a warning is 100 times more likely to be a bug than to be intentional. If you enjoy spending more time hunting down stupid bugs caused by typos than doing actual coding, then don't use strict or warnings.

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  2. UnknownAugust 17, 2009 at 5:10 PM

    I'll often go without use warnings, but even so I still use strict.

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  3. fREWAugust 17, 2009 at 9:03 PM

    As long as you let me use strict I'm happy :-)

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  4. AnonymousAugust 18, 2009 at 1:37 AM

    Personally, I like strict.

    I'm a good driver, but I still wear a seatbelt. Sure, it stops me doing really advanced things like taking off my sweater when I'm stopped at traffic lights, but I can always quickly take it off, do what I need to do, and then put it back on again.

    And as far as I'm concerned, it *is* the default. Or at least, if I say "use Moose" or "use MooseX::Declare" at the top of my script it's turned on automatically for me...

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  5. AnonymousAugust 18, 2009 at 2:40 AM

    Yes, you are!

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  6. oylenshpeegulAugust 25, 2009 at 5:38 PM

    I'm with you up until your last sentence. At this point, I think we'd all be better off if you had to say "no strict" and the rest of us (especially new people) got strictures and warnings by default.

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