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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Jeremy H. Sproat writes:
> "Christopher L. Weeks" wrote (in jest):
> > perl sucks.
>
> OKAY! THEM'S FIGHTING WORDS! GRRR! !@#!@#!
>
> ...Well, okay it does, but it sucks even less than COBOL.
Amen to that.
Perl is the first general-purpose programming language I've ever used* which
hasn't yet made me mad at it because it couldn't do something in a clean and
straightforward way. It's amazing: I just never get mad at Perl. Instead,
I'm continually amazed at how easy it is to write clean and efficient code
in it. If ever I'm stuck and don't know how to do some particular thing,
it always turns out that it's -my- limitation of simply not knowing it yet,
rather than Perl's limitation of not being able to do it (or there not being
some library on CPAN that someone has written for it). In contrast, whenever
I write C, for example, I'm constantly hating its syntactical and semantic
limitations, or having to write a function for every stupid little thing that
the language doesn't handle in a built-in way.
Neither C++ nor Java are really any better syntactically, but they're both a
lot less frustrating semantically. Well, actually, I take that back. Java
is a lot better than C syntactically because of the lack of .h files. But
both C++ and Java are still a far cry from the full-on expressiveness and
dynamic semantics of Perl and other high-level** languages. On the other
hand, Lisp, Scheme, Logo, and PostScript are all incredibly fun semantically
but really un-fun syntactically. I haven't tried Smalltalk yet.
(Anyway, I'm a big fan of using the right tool for the job***, so depending
on the job, I might very well pick Java or Lisp over Perl. I think Java
and Lisp are both very cool and important languages. This is just a happy-on
for how *un*frustrating Perl is, once over the initial learning curve. :)
Other opinions?
> Which reminds me:
> does anyone use Python?
feh.
--Todd
* Assembly, BASIC, Pascal, C, Lisp, Modula-2, PostScript, C++, Java, AWK,
sh, JavaScript, Logo, and Perl, in that order. :)
** Languages with features like closures, late binding, lambda functions,
in-memory compilation of arbitrary code constructed on-the-fly, regular
expression manipulation, arbitrary namespaces, and of course OO.
*** And if the right tool doesn't exist, make it.
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Perl rules!
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| Good post! (...) I agree with most all you say, but I am surprised that you consider this: in-memory compilation of arbitrary code constructed on-the-fly, necessary for a language to be "high level". I rather consider it a potential pitfall for the (...) (25 years ago, 19-Jun-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
| | | Re: Perl rules!
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| (...) The problem with perl, I am told, is that it's also incredibly easy to do things exactly the wrong way. In fact, it's vastly easier than to do it the right way. Just like in any other language, of course, but in perl, "there is always more (...) (25 years ago, 27-Jun-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: What happened?
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| (...) Works for me; Clinton's already in the White House... (...) Also fine by me, considering what we Implementors are told about Libertarians. ...And about the Illuminatti. ...And about the Munchkins of Zurich. ...And about Betty Crocker and the (...) (25 years ago, 16-Jun-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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