Ask me Anything: Answers

Questions and answers from my journal contents / ask me anything poll.

What do you think is the hardest aspect of perl to learn?

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.)

You wrote you had had 12 years of school. Does that mean you have a Fachabitur?

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.

Do you really only write to please your audience?

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.