A Subtle Bug

Buggy Code

Earlier this week, I saw this code being recommended on Stack Overflow. The code contains a nasty, but rather subtle bug. The version I saw has been fixed now, but I thought there were some interesting lessons to learn by looking at the problems in some detail. Let’s start by working out what the bug […]

London Perl Workshop 2018

London.pm Leaders

Last Saturday was the London Perl Workshop and (as has become traditional), I’m going to tell you how much fun it was so that you feel jealous that you missed it and make more of an effort to come along next year. This year was slightly different for me. For various reasons, I didn’t have […]

Please Don’t Use CGI.pm

CGI.pm in the Bin

Earlier this week, the Perl magazine site, perl.com, published an article about writing web applications using CGI.pm. That seemed like a bizarre choice to me, but I’ve decided to use it as an excuse to write an article explaining why I think that’s a really bad idea. It’s important to start by getting some definitions […]

Fixing a Bug

Fixing a Bug

I fixed a bug earlier this week. Ok, actually, I introduced a bug and then spent the next few hours tracking it down and fixing it – but that doesn’t sound quite so positive, does it? I thought it might be interesting to talk you through the bug and the fix. I should point out […]

The Perl Conference in Glasgow

View from the ninth floor

Yesterday (despite the best efforts of Virgin Trains to stop me) I came home from The Perl Conference in Glasgow. I had a great week up in Glasgow, and I thought I’d better write about it before I forgot anything important. Pre-Conference I arrived on Sunday evening. This was the last day of the European […]