[geeks] Go Apple....

[jodys at helluin.org]

On Mon, Jul 29, 2002 at 07:08:51PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On July 29, jodys at helluin.org wrote:
> > > Perl has never even had a valid reason for existing, never mind being used.
> >
> > That is just harsh, perl has always been a win in some
> > cases, or no one would use it.
> 
>   This doesn't mean it's a good language, or even the best choice for
> ANY application.  As a case in point, I call your attention to
> Windows.  It wins in some cases because suits smile when they hear
> Microsoft.  This doesn't suggest that Windows is a good product.

Well that's not exactly the best comparison. Everyone uses 
windows because of aggressive marketing and hype. 
Perl gets used <opinion> because the first big cgi
scripts were done with perl, and it became a language
a lot of non-programmers used. This snowballed until
cgi and perl were synonomous. </opinion> This is different 
because Windows involves intent, and perl involves luck.      
Kind of like the difference between murder 1 and 
involuntary manslaughter. 

Personally, I can argue about the quality of languages
for hours, but perl is a niche language with very
specific qualities (the big one being the ease of
processing stdin and stdout). Anybody using perl
and not using the qualities is crazy and they 
should really take a look at a different language.

Perl allows you to do a whole lot of dumb things, 
encourages a lot of stupid things, and on the whole 
is a insidious language.

Perl is insidious because once you've (as a brand 
new programmer) written a simple program (say <100LOC)
you start to think you can write a >1KLOC program,
because it was so easy before. Especially when all
those shiny modules beckon you to use them. More 
than any other language it encourages far to much
hubris in beginning programmers. Perl should stay
where it began, as a fairly powerful string 
manipulation language. And that is the only case
in which I would use it. I, personally, get the 
syntax more than I do with sed or awk. But thats
just me having a dirty, dirty little mind.

> 
> > It's not like their
> > is a insidious perl conspiracy that brainwashes new 
> > unix users into only using perl.
> 
>   No, but a lot of the Linux crowd are very "image conscious".  To be
> an "in-crowd" Linux weenie, you have to know Perl.

I thought it's moved a bit to python, but maybe thats just me.
It seems a lot of the people I know of recently gotten
into linux have been trying python first, because
even they know (or maybe it has something to do 
with my vitriol about perl) that perl is
for masochists.

> 
> > Finally anyone who writes more than 300 lines in
> > one perl program, needs to drop the keyboard,
> > come out with his hands up, and taken to the
> > proper authorities. :)
> 
>   On this, however, I must agree.  Not that you should care, but I
> think we probably all agree on most of the basic principles here.

Well mostly, I just think that there are some cases when
perl actually wins, just not that many, and certainly all the
new niches its entered (web programming mostly) are served much
better by another language. 

Here is my reasoning, as a sysadmin, I have few hours 
to study and play with a new tool, most of the time I 
would be doing my job. Perl got me going in, like, 
4 hours. Sed/awk (I would need to use them both) didn't 
get me to the same level in 4 hours, it took me more 
like 8 just to do some pretty simple (or at least I
thought they were simple) things (after 8 hours I 
gave up and went back to perl). 

Now because I'm not really a paid programmer, I don't 
use these languages all the time, so I also have the 
time it takes for me to get back up to speed. For me, 
(and let me reiterate, for me and me alone) perl is 
fairly quick to get back up to speed with. Whereas 
other languages (python for example) several hours 
longer. In this case, perl is a win because time is 
money, and I don't have much time or money. But it 
is only a win when you can be sure that the program 
is a "one-off". I would have to weigh the benefits 
to the costs (if I left, which I did, will it cost 
the business more to maintain my programs?).

I think that is a trait of a good programmer,
judging how much correctness is actually required,
decided where to make trade offs, and generally 
keeping the interests of the organization in mind.

But yeah, I *really* fucking hate large perl programs,
they hurt my head, kill my vision, cause sterility
in 70% of the population, and will utterly lay waste
to the earth within 50 years.  

Jody