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OneHundredNotOut.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

One of the things that continues to amaze me about Perl is its
flexibility; the way you can change core parts of its operation, even
from pure Perl. This lead to quite a few modules, many of which were
mere proofs of concept.

L<Sub::Versive>, for instance, was the first module on CPAN to handle
pre- and post-hooks for a subroutine; it has since been joined by a
plethora of imitators. It was written, though, in response to a peculiar
scenario. I was writing a module (C<Safety::First>) which provided
additional built-in-like functions for Perl to encourage and facilitate
defensive programming and intelligible error reporting. ("Couldn't open
file? Why not?") These built-ins had to be available from every
package, which meant playing with C<UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD>. But what if
another package was already using C<UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD>? Hence,
C<Sub::Versive> wrapped it in a pre-hook. Of course, with the
interesting bit of the problem solved, C<Safety::First> was abandoned.

L<Class::Dynamic> was an interesting attempt to provide support for code
references in C<@ISA>, analogous to code references in C<@INC>. It
works, but of course I could never find any practical use for it.

OneHundredNotOut.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

have been a godsend while writing Plucene, as it's a version of accessor
handling which typechecks what you're putting into the accessor slots.
When you're converting a typed language into an untyped one, occasional
checks that you're handling the right kind of object don't go amiss. I
learnt my lesson eventually, though, and wrote the module after Plucene
was done.

Another Java-influenced module was C<Attribute::Final>, which was written 
for my book Advanced Perl Programming as an example of both attributes
and messing about with the class module - by marking some subtourines as
C<:final>, you get an error if a derived class attempts to override it.
As with many of my proof-of-concept modules, this isn't something I'd
ever use myself, but I know others have used it. I'll let you into a
secret - over the past few months I've settled on giving modules a
version number of C<0.x> if I've never used them myself and C<1.x> if I
have.

Java wasn't the only language to influence my Perl coding activities.
Ruby is a wonderful little language I first encountered in Japan, but
didn't really get into until around 2003. Of course, when you see
another language has dome good ideas, you steal them, which is what I