I spent nearly two days writing this code. (OK, it could have been quicker, but I'd never done a Perl XS extension before, so there was a little learning curve in there while I worked out how to return a string back to Perl from a DLL written in C.)

It takes 25 seconds to run.

It be run only once, ever.

But it saved huge amounts of time - if the work had been done by hand, it would have been hundreds of man hours, and been very prone to error.

OK, I think I've seen the software development conference I need to attend this year. I've been in danger of getting behind on the latest methodologies and paradigms these last few years — heck, I'm happiest coding C++ — so I think I need a bringing back up to speed: Waterfall 2006.

(OK, so it espouses the waterfall process, but as they say: After years of being disparaged by some in the software development community, the waterfall process is back with a vengeance. You've always known a good waterfall-based process is the right way to develop software projects. Come to the Waterfall 2006 conference and see how a sequential development process can benefit your next project.)