What kind of Onions are these?

No, they spent most of their life looking completely different, lying in their beds soaking up sunshine and water and nice stuff from the dark soil. Oh, I hear you say:

I’d still know an onion if I saw it in a field.

That may be true, but is it ready to eat yet and more importantly, what type of onion is it?  Bah, what interest is that to me, I only go to the shops and buy onions in bags?  OK, fair enough but did you ever have a bad onion for your tea?  You’d know all right.  Days of misery and leaking out both ends and it’s maybe a couple of weeks until all is well again.

So it is with code.  Themes and plugins are code.  Code picked, processed and packed together in a nice shiny bag.  All you have to do is take it home and unpack it in your fridge.  However, just like a bag of onions, code can look nice, yet on the inside be rotten or full of weevils or not the kind of code your wanted when you went shopping.  Once in your fridge a bad onion will infect all your other veg and it will happily let you chop it up, cook it and eat it, in the full knowledge that you will be very sick.  For a bad onion this is the only laugh left.  Code is no different.

So do you really know your onions?  If not at least learn to tell the different types apart and learn what a good or bad onion looks like.  At the very least take a moment to ask your grandma.  She’ll spot a bad ‘un at twenty paces.

Don’t assume the supermarket ones are best.  They don’t even get checked.  You want to ask at an established green grocer’s where the dude puts out each onion himself and bags them up for you himself.  Better yet, go see an onion farmer and ask a few questions.  A decent chap won’t mind you asking -  he’ll appreciate you taking the time to know your onions.  He’ll get repeat business that way.

Oh and by the way, those onions in the picture.  Those are red onions.