Simon Willison’s Weblog

Subscribe
Atom feed for blackmagic

1 item tagged “blackmagic”

2008

The Perl community has a long-standing love/hate-affair with making changes that impose "spooky action at a distance". They call it "black magic" and it is generally considered it a last resort. Black Magic that makes GLOBAL changes to things like inheritance is often characterised as being "Octarine" (see disk world novels), because it tends to work ok when there's only one person doing it, but start to mix a few together and KABOOM!

Adam Kennedy

# 22nd March 2008, 12:28 am / adam-kennedy, blackmagic, magic, monkeypatching, perl, ruby