Editing The Perl Lazarus Workshop (section)

== The craft and the virtue ==

This stage of the journey is governed especially by practical wisdom, gratitude, justice, and humility.

Practical wisdom asks what each tool is for.

It prevents the programmer from selecting software merely because it is fashionable, entirely written in a preferred language, or advertised as capable of doing everything.

Gratitude recognizes that the workshop is inherited.

God is the source of creation, intelligence, talent, and opportunity. The programmer receives not only his own abilities, but also a world of prior human labor: operating systems, compilers, libraries, modules, editors, books, standards, and examples.

<blockquote>
“For wisdom is better than all the most precious things: and whatsoever may be desired cannot be compared to it.”
<br />— Proverbs 8:11, Douay-Rheims
</blockquote>

Justice gives the human makers of those tools what is due to them.

That may include:

* obeying licenses;
* preserving notices;
* paying a reasonable commercial fee;
* reporting defects honestly;
* acknowledging authors;
* contributing corrections;
* supporting maintainers;
* or teaching another person what one has learned.

Humility acknowledges that no one programmer created the entire workshop.

The experienced Perl programmer may know far more about databases or server operations than the author of a GUI builder. The GUI-tool author may know far more about layout engines and code generation. The installer author may understand Windows installation behavior which the application programmer has never had to consider.

The guild-minded craftsman does not resent this dependence. Human beings are made to receive from and contribute to one another.

The tools themselves must remain properly ordered.

Strawberry Perl serves the Perl programmer.

wxWidgets serves the graphical application.

wxGlade serves the designer.

MSYS2 and vim serve the editing process.

Git serves truthful revision and recovery.

PAR serves distribution.

Inno Setup serves installation.

AI may assist preparation, explanation, and first drafts.

None of them is the master.

The human craftsman remains responsible for choosing the purpose, judging the result, keeping promises, protecting the user, and directing the work toward the good.