Debate : 1277


Off-Topic / Debate / 1277

Re: Perl rules! —Todd Lehman

(...) It's no toy. (...) It's not a good language to teach Computer Science with. BTW, there is arguably never any "right" way. Just different ways to do things that either work correctly or don't work correctly -- or perform correctly but (...) (25 years ago, 28-Jun-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) Yeah, I had a nice discussion on this exact subject a while ago elsewhere. Maintainability is usually more important than efficiency or looking pretty. However, to be maintainable, code has to be written in ways that can be understood easily. (...) (25 years ago, 12-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek, lugnet.off-topic.pun)

Re: Perl rules! —Todd Lehman

(...) I'd put correctness above maintainability, in the sense that, although maintainable code needs to be able to stay correct, code ought to be correct in the first place. And above correctness, the code ought to be solving the right problems (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Chris Moseley

Todd Lehman wrote in message ... (...) It's a bigger gun, letting you shoot bigger things or alternatively make a larger whole where your foot used to be. I too like Perl, also C++. But my preference is for things like Delphi, Jade or Forte when I (...) (25 years ago, 16-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Todd Lehman

(...) (heh heh) I think I'm more grossed-out than amused. I'm already grossed out enough that there are a couple ports of perl to MS platforms. IMHO, Perl belongs in Unix (and offshots like OSX) and Microshaft OS's should die horrible deaths. The (...) (25 years ago, 17-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) I take it you have little respect for people who develop on MS platforms for a living...? I'm not sure I should be offended. It can also be argued that Perl on a Mac is equally evil: the OS doesn't even offer a shell, and its file system is (...) (25 years ago, 17-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Todd Lehman

(...) No, not at all! First, I support someone's choice of platform they have chosen to develop for. Second, I understand that MS platforms are the chief money makers in the microcomputer software industry, and that there's a lot to be said for (...) (25 years ago, 17-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) Hey! I *like* seafood! What are you saying, Todd? :-D (...) I know. :-, That's why I chose the platform to pick on. (...) Okay, it's actually starting to make sense. You're morally opposed to the evilness of Windows, not its usefulness. I'm (...) (25 years ago, 17-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Todd Lehman

(...) I don't care if MS is a money-grubbing empire as long as they make great products. The problem I have with it is that they're only making good (not great) products and that, in combination with their monopolistic nature, hurts the other guys (...) (25 years ago, 17-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) Yah, no argument there. I prefer the Windows 4 GUI over almost anything else (1), and I can run a wide range of apps on my NT box. But, I know the difference between reliability and popularity, and for mission-critical apps where down time (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

The Continuing Desecration of Perl, or, www.perl.com (Was: Perl rules!) —Jeremy H. Sproat

AAAAAAAAGH! Has anyone seen what they've done to www.perl.com today!?!?!? They've dumbed it down! It's absolutely *LOADED* with O'Reilly logos and ads! Perl is the tree, and the dog pack of O'Reilly and Associates just pissed on it! I'm more afraid (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Xerox GUI ideas vs. Apple GUI ideas (Was: Perl rules!) —Jeremy Sproat

(...) I finally got around to remembering to report on this. Of all places, I saw this theory posed in (my autographed copy of :-) the book _Just Java_, 4th Edition by Peter van der Linden, on page 341 (light relief after chapter 13 on Applets). To (...) (25 years ago, 9-Sep-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Xerox GUI ideas vs. Apple GUI ideas (Was: Perl rules!) —Paul Mison

(...) You can say many things about Wired [1], but at least they have an online archive. The above is available at: -> (URL) Cheers, (...) :: paul [1] such as it's gone from being an essential geek read to far too business orientated and obsessed (...) (25 years ago, 9-Sep-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Xerox GUI ideas vs. Apple GUI ideas (Was: Perl rules!) —Jeremy Sproat

(...) searching. Now if only the Communications of the ACM were freely available online...! Anyone know what the heck "Interactions 1.3" is? Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 9-Sep-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Godiva Ice Cream (Was: Perl rules!) —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) This I need to hear more about. Is it available in the grocery store, or do I need to visit a Godiva-only store? (...) Yah. I think he was shingling his roof. Loudly. At 1:30 AM. And from the sound of his voice, he seemed more than a little (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)

Re: Godiva Ice Cream (Was: Perl rules!) —Todd Lehman

(...) I just stumbled across it in the regular local grocery store. I was trying to find where they'd moved the Ben & Jerry's to, and -- pow -- there it was, staring at me, begging to be bought! I think there were 2 or 3 flavors (all (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)

special boxes was Re: Godiva Ice Cream (Was: Perl rules!) —Larry Pieniazek

Don't forget to mail me, Todd, with Jambalaya synchronization details!!! (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)

(canceled) —Jeremy Sproat

Re: Perl rules! —Frank Filz

Sproaticus wrote in message ... (...) that (...) born (...) fun (...) My current experience with UNIX is limited to IBM's AIX, but I find it infinitely more painful to use than Windows for some of the following reasons: X-Windows: sorry, in many (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Matthew Miller

(...) Well, I think you're not going to find much love for AIX anywhere. (...) Oh my. I personally like the ability to at least have case retained, but can go either way on whether opening a file is case sensitive. But passwords sure as hell should (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) Our chief weapon is Open Source. And freedom. Our two chief weapons are Open Source, freedom, and emacs. Oh. Our three chief weapons are Open Source, freedom, emacs, and vim. Oh, sod it. Jasper "Nobody expects... Richard Stallman!" Janssen (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Mike Stanley

(...) Please. Where would we be if we had nothing but Apple and Steve "I'm a megalomaniac" Jobs to depend on? I remember hearing YEARS ago how superior the Mac was to the PC because at the time all it took to "network" a couple of Macs together was (...) (25 years ago, 17-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) From what I've heard, neither can NT, really. Especially since IE tends to store its cache in user space, which then gets transported right around campus over the network everry time someone logs on... Combine that with the 10 Mb ethernet (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) You haven't seen Novell's Zenworks, I take it. It allows this for NT, 95, 98, yadda yadda yadda. (URL) Especially since IE (...) This is actually a network design issue, not a platform issue. Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

On Thu, 22 Jul 1999 22:46:46 GMT, Sproaticus <jsproat@io.com> wrote: <roving desktops> (...) Well, I was trying to make a joke. Sorry, weong group, I know. (...) The problem isn't that the network can't handle the load, it's that it shouldn't _have_ (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Mike Stanley

(...) You're not thinking of the same kind of environment. I have to provide hundreds of workstations for tens of thousands of casual users. There's no such thing as a "local" anything when those users move around and use random machines at random (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) Exactly. There is such a thing as local, but it only lasts the session. Therefore, a local cache should not persist beyond the session. You could possibly supplement that with a smaller (as server diskspace is a hell of a lot more expensive (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Mike Stanley

(...) Hrmmm, some stuff gets transported, yes, but it would be relatively easy to severely limit cache size in the first place, even if you couldn't turn off zapping it over the net entirely, which I think you can. (...) Heh, I wish all our network (...) (25 years ago, 23-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) I've heard a sysadmin rant about how IE & NT Do Not Approve of that. He apparently was getting it set back to default automatically. Very weird, but then again, NT is weird. I'll take `vi sendmail.cf` over "Start, Configuration, Configuration (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Mac and NT networking (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Christopher L. Weeks

(...) Whoever pointed out Zenworks was right. It's magic. And the Mac can too. I'm not our primary Mac person anymore so I don't know all the details but using MacIPX and Dave and maybe something else, they appear just as another workstation on the (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Steve Bliss

(...) The 1000-line limit in LEdit was a programming limitation. Nothing to do with anything evil in the OS, unless you consider lack of virtual memory evil (rather than just bad). Was the 8.3 file format originated with MS or DOS? I thought it was (...) (25 years ago, 20-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Todd Lehman

[removed lugnet.off-topic.debate from crosspost list] (...) I'd say, back in 1983, the lack of virtual memory and the 640KB limit was no big deal (in the PC industry). By 1989, it was becoming unfortunate. By 1991, it was getting really bad. And by (...) (25 years ago, 20-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Steve Bliss

(...) And why did IBM stick all the ROM and system stuff in high memory (>640K), rather than low memory? If they had done that, it would have been (more) possible to extend the address space without totally losing backwards compatibility. Or if (...) (25 years ago, 20-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Don Heyse

(...) Wait a minute. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but the segmented memory architecture allowed you to create absolutely *tiny* programs that did wonderful things. And you could fit tons of these programs on an affordable *floppy* disk. I (...) (25 years ago, 20-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Chris Moseley

Don Heyse wrote in message ... (...) What, Eighteen Megs And Constantly Swapping? Ever tried putting emacs on anything smaller than a CD? (...) Apparently the latest Caldera is quite good for that - all-GUI install, no reboots and autodetection of (...) (25 years ago, 21-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Fredrik Glöckner

(...) Well, I've been running Emacs on a P150 system with 643MB harddisk for three years now. That's smaller than a CD, right? Or were you refering to transporting the Emacs sources on a CD? I've used a set of 1440KB disks to do that. I needed eight (...) (25 years ago, 21-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) I do, quite regularly. Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 5. The last reboot was about two weeks ago when I upgraded from SP3 to SP5; before then, my workstation was up for about three weeks. I have a cow-orker who's had Linux up without a reboot (...) (25 years ago, 21-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) Uptime wars! barney:/etc$ uptime 9:31pm up 96 days, 9:27, 1 user, load average: 0.13, 0.03, 0.01 barney:/etc$ Jasper (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) Well, there's the cause for your stability: Who would want to use a server named barney? ;-) Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) Barney as in "Fred &", BTW, not as in "should die!!1!!!11!". Jasper (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jeremy Sproat

(...) Here, lemme help ya... $h0u1d D13!!!!!11!!1 Vb$cR1pT r00L3z!!!111!! hAcK3d bY $uP3r uUaK3 D3aTh K00L hAcK3rZ!!!!!111!!!11!! k3An3U rRE33vE$ 1s g0d!!!...!!!1 :-P Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) Your name is Neo, and I claim my 31337 h@x0r toolkit. Jasper (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Steve Bliss

(...) How did the segmented architecture enable the creation of tiny programs? (...) So? This is SVGA, and most video cards seem to not offer 4-bit color modes in resolutions above 800x600. So LDraw will happily work in modes that most video cards (...) (25 years ago, 21-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Don Heyse

(...) Relative pointers in the same segment take up half as much space as a 32 bit pointer. Depending on what you're doing, the savings here can be considerable. .COM programs used nothing but relative pointers and fit in less than 1 64K segment. (...) (25 years ago, 21-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Steve Bliss

(...) OK, relative-addressing mode is good. But it doesn't require segmented memory. All it requires is an instruction format with a defined result. For example, the conditional-jump instructions on the 6502 microprocessor[1] only used relative (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Don Heyse

(...) Perhaps you're right, but that jump instruction is relative to the Instruction Pointer which uses a full register. The segmented way you are relative to a segment which only uses half a register. You can take advantage of this half register (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Steve Bliss

(...) OK, at this point I'll have to take your word for it. The segmented address still seems like a high price to pay for a half-register. (...) Maybe this is the case in LEdit -- I don't have knowledge of that source code. But in LDraw, the (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Don Heyse

(...) I don't have source to LEdit either, but I used to write CAD software for a living around that time. We used all sorts of colormap manipulating tricks to speed up the rendering. These tricks just don't work in fixed color modes. You have to (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Steve Bliss

(...) That's a good suggestion. Especially because it's something I can make LDAO do. As opposed to some really nifty suggestions I've received which would require changing LDLite, or would be so processing-intensive that they aren't practical. (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek, lugnet.cad.dev)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) Actually, it would have been a hell of a lot easier, given that you at elast have homogeneous address space. But you do need to rewrite the kernel to be able to access it at all, and we all know how fast MS is at that sorta thing.. (...) And (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) You realise what the cost differential you're talking about is, don't you? If IBM had used 68k rather than x86, there's a much better chance today the lucky few would have macs, rather than everybody and his dog having a PC. (...) Yeah. I (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Larry Pieniazek

(...) CP/M, I think. My TRS 80 model 1 which used an OS (called DOS)(1) which was CP/M derived, had it. 1 - once you started running the floppy. Before that you were just in the ROM BASIC interpreter all the time. I had 2 floppies. 11 hundred bucks (...) (25 years ago, 20-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) A little exercise every day should take care of that, Lar. :-P Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 20-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) I, too, am a card-carrying member of the Bloat Crew. I was going to get a Bloat Crew poster for the occasion, 'cause the feature set on those babies looks like it'd be a lot of fun, but I couldn't fit it into my car. Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)

Re: Perl rules! —Tom McDonald

Under duress in lugnet.off-topic.fun, Jeremy "Bloat" Sproat has confessed to writing: (...) I saw the bloat crew the other day. They were working on a stretch of I-80 right near Albany (California). There was an amazing bloat almost hidden behind (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) What demand? Intel and MS _created_ much of todays' demand for computing. They did this to make money. Why do you think another software company other than MS would have been any better? I know you're intelligent, so I'm not prepared to (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) Much as I would like to believe that sometimes IBM and MS are capable of creating something (1), this is one thing they simply grabbed and ran with. The *need* was already there; they simply told consumers that the *want* was there, only a few (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Tim Rueger

Sorry I came in late on this, but I just had to make my mark on the uber-thread. :^) (...) I use MacPerl under Apple's Macinosh Programmer's Workshop, a shell environment available for free from Apple. I use Perl on my Mac to develop a couple (...) (25 years ago, 24-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Mike Stanley

(...) Not sure what Mac you have, so it's hard to know if this machine is (or was) cheaper, but my wife's P2-350 can do all those (although she doesn't do 1 + 2). We have Photoshop with 2 different scanners (flatbed HP and HP negative/slide (...) (25 years ago, 24-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Tim Rueger

(...) I'm use a hand-me-down PM6100 (60MHz 601) that I've added memory and an L2 cache to, say $150 total. We also have a substantially more expensive Power Computing box (CPU was about $1400 in '97, we've added other stuff since then). (...) This (...) (25 years ago, 25-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Mike Stanley

(...) Ok, so asking for a cheaper machine than a hand-me-down is a bit misleading, don't you think? I could just as easily say that Rachael's P2-350 was a hand-me-down for her (since it was) because it used to be my machine. In fact, since it hasn't (...) (25 years ago, 25-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Christopher L. Weeks

(...) Right, I think it's a bad argument tactic to suggest that Macs are cheaper than Intel hardware. It just ain't so. But, they are faster, more reliable, easier to use, easier to maintain, less reliant on MS (which matters to some), and home to (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jasper Janssen

(...) No. They are neither faster, nor cheaper, nor faster per unit of currency spent. It used to be, back in the glory days of PowerPC, that the fastest Mac boxes beat the fastest Intel boxes. Not any more. You do realise that the fastest Intel box (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Chris Phillips

(...) Unfortunately, there's raw speed and then there's effective speed. Today's Windows machine takes anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes to boot, in my experience. And from what I've seen, Macs aren't any better. Does anyone here remember the Apple ][ ? (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Mike Stanley

(...) Faster? In what way, running what apps? Sorry, but having used everything from the original lunchbox to the latest blue+white G3 on the Mac side and everything from the 8086 to a fully tripped-out P3-550, it ain't so. Maybe at various times (...) (25 years ago, 27-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Christopher L. Weeks

(...) I frankly don't know all the specs of all the machines around, but WRT the machines that I have around, I can count on the Macs being ~30% more expensive and a variable amount faster in ways that I find important. I've been using SETI@home as (...) (25 years ago, 27-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Mike Stanley

(...) Well, that's a good point. I could buy a prebuilt machine that matches that G3's specs for $1626. Basically the same machine I just ordered for myself at work minus the 21" monitor. And I won't have to buy a real keyboard and mouse in addition (...) (25 years ago, 27-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Christopher L. Weeks

<slrn7ppuk6.1g6.cjc@...S.UTK.EDU> <379DDDC3.86F71E58@c...souri.edu> <slrn7prp5p.1m8.cjc@...S.UTK.EDU> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit (...) Wait. I missed something. So you can spend $2800 piecing together (...) (25 years ago, 27-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Mike Stanley

(...) No, what I meant, even if it didn't come through clearly, was that if I were to choose to spend $2800 on a computer (which I would not NEED to do, unless I wanted a true behemoth of a machine) I could put one together that would outperform, in (...) (25 years ago, 28-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jasper Janssen

(...) Let us know how it goes, won't you? I've heard others say the 366 can be reliably clocked to 550, but I'm skeptical right now. I do assume you're talking Mendocinos here? Jasper (25 years ago, 5-Aug-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Mike Stanley

(...) Celerons. And it didn't work. I'm sure there ARE 366's that will oc to 550 just fine, especially since I could buy pre-tested ones that are guaranteed to run stable, but all 5 of the ones a friend at a store tried either wouldn't post at all (...) (25 years ago, 5-Aug-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: OS advocacy (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Christopher L. Weeks

<379E1341.88686655@c...souri.edu> <slrn7pst1h.1om.cjc@...S.UTK.EDU> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit (...) Oh my! I've been here at MU for eight years and we haven't seen either extreme that you've watched. (...) (25 years ago, 28-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Chris Moseley

Todd Lehman wrote in message ... (...) OK, I'd class those as incompetent rather than poor. Not that I'm pedantic at all. (...) Most likely, as I'm good at misunderstanding things like that. It sounded to me as though you were tending towards saying (...) (25 years ago, 19-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Matthew Miller

(...) Hey, I'm going to have to take issue with that. English can be a very beautiful language. It can also be an ugly language, but that doesn't mean that it can't be amazing poetry in the right hands. So actually it's a pretty good analogy. :) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Matthew Miller

(...) Another great strength of English is that through years of borrowing ideas from other languages, you end up with many ways to express the same idea, allowing the flexibilty both to make things beautiful and to find just the precise way to (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Steve Bliss

(...) It also means there are 50 thousand rules to learn, and 50 million exceptions to those rules. At least we don't have to cojugate (sp?) anything... Steve (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Matthew Miller

(...) Luckily human beings are very good at that. In fact, the rules seem to be mostly descriptive -- we naturally say things a certain way, and then retroactively we look and say, "ok, that's the right way to say it because of such-and-such-rule". (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Steve Bliss

(...) It's a good thing human minds are good at language -- can you imagine if parents actually had to teach their children to speak? That would be painful. Believe me, I know -- I tried for 4 years. *Then* my kid decided he was ready to talk. But (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Matthew Miller

(...) I was that way too. That's why god invented spellcheck. (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Todd Lehman

[removed lugnet.off-topic.debate from ng-post list] (...) I had 2 years of German and didn't end up learning too much of it because it was from books and tapes and a little bit of conversation in class. I can still write some simple sentences and (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) "What The--?! Why don't we use words we already know?" And thus the evil in Grace Hopper begat COBOL. ... Can you imagine the spelling errors that would pop up in code if programming languages were spoken? :-, Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Todd Lehman

(...) Hey, don't be dissin' COBOL for that :-( It served a purpose in its time (~40 years ago) and it's not COBOL's fault that it's still being used. (...) LOL! (OTOH, I've written 'printf' a couple of times when I'd meant to write 'print' :-) (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) I have to admit, I'm something of an anti-COBOL bigot. That has obviously clouded my judgement, but I can't see what COBOL could do that FORTRAN wasn't already doing more cleanly and efficiently, on the same platforms. Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Todd Lehman

(...) Well, hey, aren't we all -- and as well we should all be (IMHO) in 1999, especially with all this Double-Byte COBOL, OO-COBOL, and COBOL-Java stuff going on as perverse attempts to keep COBOL alive and milking the Y2K cash cow. But I thought (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) Oy vey, der camps. I alvays vorget der camps. Und der suits und der schlide-rules and der schtuff. (...) Wasn't COBOL started in 1959? By the time COBOL was developed, my dad (1) was writing FORTRAN compilers for whatever platform he needed (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Todd Lehman

(...) I think that's when it was first released, right? Hopper began working on it much earlier than that, yes? 1955 was what I read somewhere a couple hours ago. (...) Hey cool -- so you're a second-gen too? We'll have to invent a secret handshake. (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) Heh heh heh. What was your parental-unit (1) coding? My dad was basically a civvie contractor for the Army for a good chunk of his career, writing software for calibrating RADAR and RADOT hardware, though he did work at the Hanford Nuclear (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Steve Bliss

(...) I don't know the original specs for either language, but I *think* COBOL's data-description capabilities were much richer than FORTRAN's. Steve (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Larry Pieniazek

(...) job security baby. Hey, did you hear about the new Object Oriented COBOL? It's true. They've come up with a name for it! ADD 1 TO COBOL. (25 years ago, 16-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jasper Janssen

(...) FORTRAN in the same sentence as clean and efficient, without a negative. *shakes head* must be a misparse. Jasper (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Larry Pieniazek

(...) It's a relative thing. Back then, Algol 60 hadn't even been developed, and FORTRAN hadn't been muddied up with more stuff. (why, I remember when I had to do my programs on punched cards... once you punch it. there's NO undo!... and I had to (...) (25 years ago, 25-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

"Why, in my day..." —Todd Lehman

(...) Heh heh, I think I remember hearing about someone who took a precision knife to a punched and changed a D into an E by altering the lowest order bit. IIRC, punched cards were easier to do that sort of thing to than paper tape because punched (...) (25 years ago, 25-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Steve Bliss

(...) Sometimes I'm more reasonable. Sometimes I'm not. Not the world's best parent, but far from the worst. My children are both very not-ordinary, but in completely different ways. Steve (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Perl rules! —Jasper Janssen

(...) *shake* not quite true. HAve you ever learned a language foreign to you? I'v ebeen lucky enough to learn English as virtually a second mother language (early start, mostly), but I've also learnt French, German, Latin and ancient Greek (to (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)