31 January 2008 by John.

Check out Sister Corita Kent’s 10 rules for creative thinking posted on Scott Berkun’s blog.

http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2008/creative-thinking-rules/

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31 January 2008 by John.

I listened to an interview last night with Perl guru Randal Schwartz. He said that Perl is meant for people who use the language at least two or three hours per week. If you’re not going to use it that often, you’re probably better off using something else. But if you use it full time, you can see huge productivity increases.

That matches my experience, at least the first part. I was attracted to Perl because I could imagine being very productive with it. At first I used the language infrequently. Every time I sat down to write Perl I had to work hard to reload the language into my brain. Then for a while I used it frequently enough to achieve some fluency. Then as I wrote Perl less often I could almost feel the language slipping away.

Of course you have to use any language, human or computer, to achieve and maintain fluency. But my sense is that Perl requires more frequent use than other programming languages in order to remain minimally competent, and it repays frequent use more than other languages. I imagine this is a consequence of the natural language principles baked into the language.

One of the things I prefer about Python is that you do not have to use it three hours a week to remain competent.

I no longer write Perl, but I still enjoy listening to thought-provoking Perl speakers like Randal Schwartz.

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