Ask me Anything: Answers
Tuesday, 27 January 2004 15:32![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pneQuestions and answers from my journal contents / ask me anything poll.
Probably either learning how to program large applications, or how to use CPAN effectively.
It's easy, I think, to pick up habits while writing small-to-medium Perl scripts that don't scale to large applications. For example, learning how to modularise may be difficult if you're used to writing one-liners and one-filers.
And there are so many modules on CPAN that it can be hard to know whether there's already something that does what you want, so you don't have to re-invent the wheel.
(And sometimes there are so many that it's hard to know which one to pick. Favourites are templating systems, database abstraction schemes, and date/time modules.)
No. I went to the International School Hamburg (really bad website) and finished school with an IB (International Baccalaureate) degree.
This allows me to study at most universities abroad, as far as I know. Since I'm not a German, it also allows me to study at German universities. (As far as I know, German students who obtain an IB are not allowed into German universities based only on that. I don't know the details, though.)
FWIW, I graduated with a score of 36 (out of 45 possible) points; I like telling Germans that my grade point average was 6.0 since 6 is a failing score in German schools :D.
Er, no? Do I give this impression?
In the entry with the poll, I even wrote In the end, I'll only take this as a guideline, since I usually post what I think of posting rather than what people expect me to post, but it does influence the entries I make
, which (I think) sums it up pretty well.
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no subject
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 06:51 (UTC)and since I didn't know this, I'll bother you by asking now...
You're not German? Where are you from originally?
Philip and his nationality
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 06:59 (UTC)No, I'm not.
Where are you from originally?
Germany.
Confused yet? :)
My father is British. He had studied French and German at university; at one point, his company offered to transfer him to their German office so that he could put his language skills to some use. In Germany, he met my (German) mother and stayed here.
When I was born, my mother got to decide whether the kids would be British or German; she chose British (partly because Germany has compulsory military service and the UK doesn't).
I grew up bilingually English/German: both of my parents spoke only English to me at the beginning, and my mother switched to German when I was about three and was starting to learn German from the kids on the playground, while my father continued speaking English to me.
The school was all English-speaking as well, which means that I tend to be more comfortable in English in sciences and things I learned at school, even though my German is probably now better in general since I don't have as much opportunity to speak English now. (The school was also responsible for giving me an American accent, which my father wasn't very happy with, though I think my underlying British accent is now dominant again.) One could claim that German is my mother tongue and British my father tongue :)
So. I'm British, but I can't tell you "what's it like in England?" since I've lived here all my life and have only visited England for holidays.
Oh, and when I turned eighteen, I think I could have assumed German citizenship, but I never bothered. Even now, when I'm too old to be drafted, I don't see much point since European Union citizens have nearly as many rights and possibilities as Germans, so it's not really a hassle being British. Especially now that I have a permanent residence permit and don't have to go back every couple of years to renew it.
Re: Philip and his nationality
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 07:17 (UTC)"mother tongue" isn't supposed to be that literal =P
mother tongue
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 07:29 (UTC)Re: Philip and his nationality
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 09:25 (UTC)I think someone else who is British but lives in Germany told me he can't vote anywhere, not in Britain because he doesn't live there and not in Germany because he isn't German.
voting
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 11:43 (UTC)And in Germany I cannot vote except in local elections (within the same town or, in this case, city part).
Re: Philip and his nationality
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 10:11 (UTC)Thank you.
Moment's gone.
Re: Philip and his nationality
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 10:15 (UTC)You'd have much better luck just making certain people <.< move out there...
Re: Philip and his nationality
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 10:12 (UTC)Pefect sense :o)~
Re: Philip and his nationality
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 12:00 (UTC)Culturally, I'm probably a lot more German than English, since I grew up here.
And when I talk about "we" and "us", I typically mean Germans.
Learning Perl
Date: Wednesday, 4 February 2004 12:51 (UTC)-- Randal Schwartz, merlyn@stonehenge.com, http://www.stonehenge.com/books/