Reading about the exciting concept of code speed vs programmer time. That is, balancing what it costs to make a machine run slow code, vs what it costs to let a coder work easier.

Convenience.

So.. I noticed I was coding stuff that uses a mysql connection, and I store the connection variables, the credentials- in a YAML configuration file. Often. It’s good practice. YAML files are simple, and you can store them anywhere- this helps keep sensittive data, or .. the data that makes the same app act different- appart from the executable application.

I was helping a co-worker learn some perl, and he wanted to connect to a db. He was sort of impatient- because the details of establishing a connection with a new language are a little bit… beneath him? This is someone highly trained and skilled in other languages and systems. And he wanted to just.. *have* a connection handle to a database.

So… YAML.. DBH…. I wrote and released YAML::DBH.

As simple as it gets. You write a config file:

—
password: super
user: myself
database: superstuff

In your script:

use YAML::DBH ‘yaml_dbh’;

my $dbh = yaml_dbh(’./credentials.yml’);