Re: Matt

> I'd recommend Matt Wright's code -- it has many pedagogical uses:
> 
>   * demonstrating how working with Perl rather than against it can make
>     code much simpler and easier to understand (by taking a section of
>     his code and rewriting it)
> 
>   * practising reading badly-written code by other people

I do a class called 'Program Repair Shop' that is about exactly these
topics.  When I was writing the class, I looked into using some of
Matt's code as examples.  But I found that Matt's code really isn't
very bad.  Many examples that are much, much worse are available for
the taking on Perlmonks, usenet, and IRC.

My conclusion was that Matt is way above the median, and that to help
the real beginners with the kinds of mistakes that they tend to make,
I would be better off avoiding Matt's code, since it makes different
(and more sophisticated) mistakes.  Most beginners, in my experience,
have not yet gotten to the level of skill which allows them to make
the sorts of mistakes that Matt makes.