I made my first entry on use.perl today, despite my normal dislike of having
journals other than the one on manxome. I figured there had to be some kind of
Perl module to post to use.perl, and waltman pointed it out to me. I think
I've got a crappy little script that will find perl-related entries here and
post them to use.perl. I'll find out shortly.
I wrote myself a message at work on my biggest whiteboard in big letters: JFDI.
The more I try to JFDI, the more I actually do get things done, so it's
encouraging. I need to plan less and do more. I get too bogged down in
"what-ifs" and I end up never creating stuff for fear that it will suck. More
and more, as I try to get things done, I find myself quoting the Pragmatic
Programmer in my head. "Pragmatic programmers fire tracer bullets."
My personal take on this, lately, has been, "Pragmatic programmers write bad
code and fix it later." (Kinda.) Test::More is, really, a godsend for mixing
JFDI with quality. I write the freaking tests, implement the freaking code,
and I get some decent stuff done. Later, I can extend both to keep making them
better. I feel like I need to share this discovery with everyone, but sadly
most of the people I know already know or don't get it.
Hopefully I'll be successful in demonstrating its awesomeness to my
Perl-learning co-workers in Cardiff when I'm over there next month. Showing is
better than telling.
As mentioned elsewhere, I'm making my first attempts to see if I can start a
local Perl Mongers. It's hard to have zero local people off of whom to bounce
ideas, or even with whom to socialize. I like non-geeks plenty, but everyone
likes to have friends of his own ilk.
