5 Oct 2008 (updated 28 Aug 2009 at 02:06 UTC)
»
Doing Perl programming. I am usually in a rush to do what I
want so my usual practice is to throw everything together
and just get it working, and then do cleanup later.
Sometimes the cleanup is necessitated by things breaking,
like it is now. This code interacts on the Internet, and as
remote servers are always changing, I have to expect that my
code will change due to that. Currently I am giving
variables meaningful names and inserting comments. There is
also duplicate code which is bothering me, although not
hindering anything other than me having to make changes
twice. Also, some of my functions are too long and have to
be broken up. My C is better than my PERL, so I am more
used to doing things in the good "Code Complete" style when
programming in C, but my PERL programs are getting long
enough, and are changing enough where I have to make sure it
is not spaghetti code.
After working as a UNIX admin for ten years, I decided (with
a friend's encouragement) two years ago to go to night
school to get my bachelors. I took a lot of required
courses for art and the like first, but my last two courses
and current course are on the Computer Science major track.
Aside from getting a cursory knowledge of C++ in my last
class, I haven't learned much useful that I can apply yet,
although my current class on assembly is supposed to go over
processor registers, memory etc. So far we have only been
learning addition in binary and the like.