[geeks] Go Apple....

Greg A. Woods woods at weird.com
Mon Jul 29 09:32:47 CDT 2002


[ On Monday, July 29, 2002 at 09:58:14 (+0100), David Cantrell wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] Go Apple....
>
> On Mon, Jul 29, 2002 at 01:29:59AM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > Hmmm..... there is this perl junk that's pretty widely used
> 
> I wish people would stop this stupidity and get it into their heads that
> perl is just another language, and that like any language, it's possible
> to write good code and bad code in it.

Perhaps you don't understand the fundamental problem here.  A good
high-level language makes it harder to write bad code, not easier.  Perl
was more or less designed with the likes of the obfuscated code contests
in mind.  Have you never heard Damian Conway talk about his rejected
entry to the Perl contest, SelfGOL?  It's a fascinating program, but
would be totally impossible to write in such an unreadable way in
smalltalk, or even lisp.

Perl is a _bad_ language, from start to finish.  Yes, people can, with
care, write good code using it, but that's the exception, not the rule.

I can, with care and time, build a house that'll last a hundred years
using just grains of sand, but only by transforming them into a
fundamentally different material.  In their original form they are not a
very good building material.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;           <woods at robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <woods at weird.com>



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