When should I use OO Perl?

Question

I'm just learning Perl.

When is it advisable to use OO Perl instead of non-OO Perl?

My tendency would be to always prefer OO unless the project is just a code snippet of < 10 lines.

TIA

Answer 1

From Damian Conway:

10 criteria for knowing when to use object-oriented design

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1. Design is large, or is likely to become large

2. When data is aggregated into obvious structures, especially if there’s a lot of data in each aggregate

   For instance, an IP address is not a good candidate: There’s only 4 bytes of information related to an IP address. An immigrant going through customs has a lot of data related to him, such as name, country of origin, luggage carried, destination, etc.

3. When types of data form a natural hierarchy that lets us use inheritance.

   Inheritance is one of the most powerful feature of OO, and the ability to use it is a flag.

4. When operations on data varies on data type

   GIFs and JPGs might have their cropping done differently, even though they’re both graphics.

5. When it’s likely you’ll have to add data types later

   OO gives you the room to expand in the future.

6. When interactions between data is best shown by operators

   Some relations are best shown by using operators, which can be overloaded.

7. When implementation of components is likely to change, especially in the same program

8. When the system design is already object-oriented

9. When huge numbers of clients use your code

   If your code will be distributed to others who will use it, a standard interface will make maintenence and safety easier.

10. When you have a piece of data on which many different operations are applied

    Graphics images, for instance, might be blurred, cropped, rotated, and adjusted.

11. When the kinds of operations have standard names (check, process, etc)

    Objects allow you to have a DB::check, ISBN::check, Shape::check, etc without having conflicts between the types of check.

Answer 2

There is a good discussion about same subject @ PerlMonks.

Having Moose certainly makes it easier to always use OO from the word go. The only real exception is if compilation start-up is an issue (Moose does currently have a compile time overhead).