Expect some Unexpected Problems

Eric Raymond's "Tale of J. Random Newbie" is illustrative of the many problems programmers encounter in highly-proprietary environments. Generally however, even if you're using proven, mature, well-documented and functional technology, you are likely to encounter bugs.

I like Perl a lot, and have recently found some bugs or even crashes in Perl code, which I've been trying to isolate and report. Perl is otherwise very good and reliable, but advanced users, or even intermediate ones are likely to discover many edge cases.

You should make sure you have the capability to isolate, report and possibly send a fix to such a technological problem, and get a prompt fix. This often depends on having good support from the technology vendor or developer.