51–60 of 96 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being bad at programming is not hard, anyway.
I knew I was going to get downvoted to oblivion for that comment. But I still firmly believe it. People are much harder to deal with. Much more dynamic. I'm confident the computer would not have downvoted me :) BTW you apparently have a gazillion repo's in github but no blog ... writing is much harder than programming IMHO.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perl 5 has nothing to do with Perl 6 development or even releases. Even after Perl 6 is released Perl 5 will still continue to evolve and grow. At the moment Perl 6 specification gives a good evolution map for Perl 5 development. So you need not to have to ever worry about Perl 6. Perl 5 is a solid language in itself. Perl has been amazingly useful since almost 25 years now. And anybody who denies this is simply trol…
I have hardly ever seen such high praise for a language. I guess I'll have to learn it sometime and see what the hoopla's about. With the Modern Perl book, of course, if it's still the best-of-breed then.
Some languages get a special distinction that its users just love to program in it. Languages and tools like Lisp, C, Perl, Vi, Emacs etc they just never go away. Because someone somewhere is always discovering some goodness in them and is using it. And that process is timeless. These languages have managed to last for decades sometimes their adoption drops, sometimes it peaks, sometimes there is a constant line of usage. But they don't go away.
If you read the mailing lists during early days of Perl on comp.lang.perl.* and other writings by people like Tom Christiansen. You will see some unique tone of passion and excitement. The golf competitions, the discussions on one liners, the growth of CPAN, the occasional gems posted on Perl Monks. Great books like Programming Perl, Higher Order Perl and Modern Perl Book and Perl's extreme practical approach and emphasis of 'Getting things done'.
I guess for people on Unix platforms who had no other respite but to use C and a mash of other Unix text processing utilities. Or for Java programmers who have to write 10 classes to open a file and do trivial operations.
Perl is almost like giving Ice water to somebody in hell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perl 5 has nothing to do with Perl 6 development or even releases. Even after Perl 6 is released Perl 5 will still continue to evolve and grow. At the moment Perl 6 specification gives a good evolution map for Perl 5 development. So you need not to have to ever worry about Perl 6. Perl 5 is a solid language in itself. Perl has been amazingly useful since almost 25 years now. And anybody who denies this is simply trol…
I have hardly ever seen such high praise for a language. I guess I'll have to learn it sometime and see what the hoopla's about. With the Modern Perl book, of course, if it's still the best-of-breed then.
I'm a python programmer and this article really makes me interested in Perl. The only problem is that Perl 6 haven't shipped yet in more then 4 years since this article was written, have it?
If you're interested, skim through Modern Perl [0].I really like this description from this Amazon review [1]: "I had a hard time characterizing this wonderful book. It explains the fundamentals, but it's not an introductory book like Learning Perl. It covers almost every feature of the Perl 5 language, but it's not a reference book like Programming Perl. It explains common idioms, but it's not a guide to Perl 5 flue…
Anyone aware of a similar book for Python? For when I, you know, come back to Python after straying into Perl for a few years?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have hardly ever seen such high praise for a language. I guess I'll have to learn it sometime and see what the hoopla's about. With the Modern Perl book, of course, if it's still the best-of-breed then.
Although Python is taking more of these roles over time, Perl is still the thing that holds much of the internet's infrastructure and tools together, as well as internal servers, so it's a good thing to know if you're interested in all that.
But unfortunately, its almost like going backwards. Perl was invented because C + Unix text processing utilities together were not proving to be good for many tasks like Text processing, fast prototyping etc. Now using another C based language which doesn't do that, takes us back to the old problem again.
IMO, Python doesn't solve those problems. Regex support is really bad in Python and file operations are not trivial. There is too much of Java feel to it and it just doesn't have the feel of bash/perl/awk's scripting powers. Scoping is just not right. There doesn't seem to be a sane ways of evolution without breaking backwards compatibility. No equivalent of CPAN. And in many ways white space based parsing is not good for large and nested code blocks. It still doesn't have multiline lambda's. And its too much do-it-one-true-way kind of language, that sort of is a blocker for quick hacking. Because I like to write what I think, and not the other way around. The language is too verbose, and unlike Perl and Emacs there are no exponential productivity gains over time.
But I agree though, that Python does have some other good things. The OO syntax is neat, there are some great frameworks like Twisted and Django. And there is low barrier to entry which makes new bie feel just at home. The tutorials are just too good. And good standard libraries ship with it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although Python is taking more of these roles over time, Perl is still the thing that holds much of the internet's infrastructure and tools together, as well as internal servers, so it's a good thing to know if you're interested in all that.
Hmmm, Python has some great frameworks and is a great language. But unfortunately, its almost like going backwards. Perl was invented because C + Unix text processing utilities together were not proving to be good for many tasks like Text processing, fast prototyping etc. Now using another C based language which doesn't do that, takes us back to the old problem again. IMO, Python doesn't solve those problems. Regex s…
In my opinion, none of the language will solve the problems with programming or bad programs. The only thing which could help programmers is the way they think of the solution and how they approach to it. Thinking about long term solution for a given problem may help.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew I was going to get downvoted to oblivion for that comment. But I still firmly believe it. People are much harder to deal with. Much more dynamic. I'm confident the computer would not have downvoted me :) BTW you apparently have a gazillion repo's in github but no blog ... writing is much harder than programming IMHO.
That's a non-sensical statement. Certain types of writing may be harder than certain types of programming. And vice versa.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew I was going to get downvoted to oblivion for that comment. But I still firmly believe it. People are much harder to deal with. Much more dynamic. I'm confident the computer would not have downvoted me :) BTW you apparently have a gazillion repo's in github but no blog ... writing is much harder than programming IMHO.
I have a blog and have written a book. However, I'm between blogging software at the moment.
Hey its just my opinion that engineering is an easier problem than other business activities. Programming is more predictable. You can fix bad programmers.
Just a curious question... was writing the book harder than programming?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmmm, Python has some great frameworks and is a great language. But unfortunately, its almost like going backwards. Perl was invented because C + Unix text processing utilities together were not proving to be good for many tasks like Text processing, fast prototyping etc. Now using another C based language which doesn't do that, takes us back to the old problem again. IMO, Python doesn't solve those problems. Regex s…
What you're saying seems handwavey and imprecise. What -- specifically -- is wrong with regular expressions and file operations in python? How is white space parsing "not good" for large and nested code blocks? (And why do you have large nested code blocks in the first place? Break those up! Those are hard to read regardless!) And how is there a "java feel"? What does that even mean? And in what way is python verbose…