Exegesis 2: Damian Conway On Perl6 125
sumengen writes: "Damian's writing a series of articles parallel to Larry's Apocalypses.
These 'Exegesis' articles will show full perl6 programs, with
commentary exlaining the new features.
The first Exegesis (numbered 2, to keep in sync with Larry) shows a
perl6 version of a binary tree program from the Perl Cookbook.
Get excited to see things like:
my int ($pre, $in, $post) are constant = (0..2);"
my int ($pre, $in, $post) are constant = (0..2);"
"are constant" that's retarded... (Score:1)
for perl anyways, is this supposed to be some COBOL style shit or a language that has syntax like "s/\/=[ab]//" etc type crap...
Perl has always been nasty syntactically and the people who learned it and know how to use it like it that way. Regexs, $_, and all the other assorted funky magic stuff. Let's not try to throw in some stuff that looks like semi-english just to stop the weenies from switching learning python.
I don't like Perl (Score:1)
What is even more ironic is that Larry fancies himself some sort of "linguist" or "English" major. He went to college and read a couple books on Shakespeare so now he thinks he is some kind of language expert. Well it doesn't work that way.
Take a look at Perl. Does it look like it was designed by anyone who knew anything about the English language? No, it doesn't. It honest-to-God looks like it was designed by someone who was an Egyptian hieroglyphics major who spent all his free time watching Star Trek -- in other words, someone completely disconnected with reality.
So you can see why Perl sucks. Not to worry; there are other better languages to use. Try Python or Ruby, or gosh darn it -- Korn Shell. Any of these is better than Perl, a "language" which should be relegated to set decoration for Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
Over the last couple of weeks, I've been doing some stuff in Perl. It's the first time I've used it, and I must say that it has, without a doubt, one of the most tortuous and confusing syntax of any language I've ever used.
I *HATE* all this stuff with preceding variable with $'s and %'s and stuff - it reminds me of the old BASIC days of 15 years ago.
In the latest Perl book, there's a couple of paragraphs that try and defend all this $ and % stuff. It basically says that if you don't like it you're missing the point and that you really ought to go back to school.
Well, Mr. Wall, YOU ARE WRONG ! This sort of crappy syntax should not be necessary. There is simply no reason for it at all.
It is INCREDIBLY difficult to just pass a variable about the place and actually get it to pop out at the other side in the same format as it was at the start. Or, more correctly, it's incredibly difficult to contrive some weird reference syntax (with the appropriate $ or % or whatever) in both the call to a function and the extraction of the variable out of that bloody stupid $_ thing within the function.
I agree with an earlier post - it is a jumbled mess. C++ is often criticized for being confusing and having weird syntax. This may well be a valid complaint, but at least once you know how to do it, it's consistent !
I don't doubt for a moment that someone will read this and think "idiot - he doesn't know what he's doing". The thing it, it shouldn't be difficult - it should be easy to do easy things.
I've often seen the following description of Perl.....
"It makes difficult things easy and it makes impossible things possible."
Added to this ought to be the phrase "it makes easy things UNBELIEVABLY difficult and contrived".
That brings me nicely to a general problem with the Perl book (and indeed most of the available Perl documentation) - why are the examples so crap ?
example (this is lifted straight out of the book)......
The 'while' loop..........
while ($tickets_sold ;
chomp($purchase);
$tickets_sold += $purchase;
}
This isn't actually that good an example of what my gripe is, but look at it !!! I mean, what's wrong with a READABLE example like.....
my ($blob) = 0;
while ($blob 10)
{
print "$blob\n";
}
In other words, stick to the topic in hand - why start introducing stuff about file input and stuff when all you want to know is "what does a while loop do ?", and "how do I write it ?".
This sort of crappy, over engineered, example is typical of what you get in the documentation.
Plus, the examples are often incomplete - they assume that variables are defined (OK, I know you don't need to do this), and they often assume that you've done lots of other stuff. Until you realize this, you tap in the example and find it won't even bloody compile !!!!!!
I HATE Perl !!!!!
OK, rant over.
if const &perl6 (a..Z) (Score:1)
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
Of course a functional language like Mercury, ML, Haskell, etc, is going to eat up a binary tree for breakfast. In my experience getting a functional language to do anything more than a small example of code is nearly impossible, although I have seen that people have coded raytracers, etc, in ML. Speed demon is not the word to describe these things though.
The usefulness of a language these days is scored by the number of libraries available for it to do things. Perl wins here, C wins here.
Anyway, Perl is easy in my opinion. Regular expressions are great once you know about them, and really powerful. Sure, Perl has some idiosyncracies that need to be sorted out, which is what Perl 6 should be aiming to do.
I like the $, %, @, etc. They show me the type of a variable at a glance. Look at C variables - most people (should) use hungarian notation, and just look at the horrible result of that.
Just because BASIC did the same kind of thing doesn't mean it is a bad idea. However, BASIC was much more limited. I mean $ for scaler, % for hashes, @ for lists, etc is easy with Perl.
And CPAN rules.
New Sig: If you think a C geek is bad, wait 'til you see an ML freak.
Re:Perl misses the point (Score:1)
Well, actually, it does precisely what I was expecting. This is probably attributable to the fact that I bothered to learn perl before trying to code perl. What's with people confusing "easy to do powerful things" with "if you speak english, you can code"? To my knowledge, the latter has never been a stated goal of perl.
The $,@,%,etc. does not refer to the type of variable that was originally declared (that's why we have UNIQUE NAMES), it's supposed to tell perl what context you mean something in. It's a feature -- NOT a bug. But apparently enough of you have complained to get it changed, and since the change is elegant anyway, I'll do the manly thing and just suck it up.
Re:RFC, like request for comment? for real? (Score:1)
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
death of the diamond operator? (Score:2)
The first thing you'll notice is that reports of the diamond operator's death have been greatly exaggerated. Yes, even though the Second Apocalypse foretold its demise, Rule No. 2 has since been applied and the angle brackets live!
I assume this means that Larry has had a change of heart since he wrote Apocalypse 2, but what is this mysterious "Rule No. 2" that has been invoked?
--
Re:Not as advertised (Score:1)
People just seem to have a problem getting their heads 'round the likes of pointers. A big difference between Perl and C is that you can get a lot done in Perl before you have to start using pointers/references, so when you do start to need them you are at least comfortable with the rest of the language.
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
Okay, so you'll still have @$% and friends, but so what? Personally I
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:3)
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted.
Reason: Junk character post.
Kind of funny, since it's all written in perl. Kudos, rob- you've managed to stifle any discussion about perl code.
Python, (Score:1)
Vermifax
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
For the Children of Windows (much like Children of the Corn), you are screwed. If you want an easy-to-use/familliar programming language try Logo. A more serious suggestion is Rexx from OS/2.
Has anybody noticed that all these Python/KDE/PHP/GUI loving and Unix whining posters come from User IDs over 200,000 ? What you people want in Windows 2000. Go get it from a warez site and call it Freeware.
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
You come from a unix background. That is nice.
Are you standing in support of the claim Perl is hard to learn?
So you've used sed, awk, bourne-shell, cut, sort, and grep alot...right? You know that bourne-shell uses backticks for sub shelled output? You know that '/' is called slash and '\' is called back-slash? (inverting this distinction is a big child-of-windows give away.) You've programmed in C...so you know argc, argv and envp right?
All these things translate one-for-one into PERL and you find it hard to understand PERL?
If you didn't understant all the above unix references, you aren't from a unix background. You are a cage-monkey the knows how to reboot unix computers. (Sorry for insulting all the cage-monkeys out there; love yah!)
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:2)
Re:RFC in Perl 7 (Score:2)
You're thinking of "COME FROM".
See "A Linguistic Contribution to GOTO-less Programming"
http://neil.franklin.ch/Jokes_and_Fun/Goto-less
It's been implemented in INTERCAL.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/intercal/
--
Re:RFC, like request for comment? for real? (Score:1)
Re:The real strength of Perl (Score:1)
You even sound like Larry.
Perl is "legendary" (notorious) outside the Perl clique for being unreadable and unmaintainable.
Perl programmers tend to use regular expressions
and bizarre syntax far too frequently just because you can. I don't see that as a good thing for
people who will have to maintain that code.
I do not see anything Damian's document to convince me otherwise: Perl has gotten way out of hand from its simple beginnings. Perl 4 had a grammar that mere mortals like me could understand. Perl 5 was okay if you didn't use
its weird hacked on pseudo OO. Smalltalk,
Java, Python, and Ruby are all powerful OO
languages that are much easier to work with
IMNSHO. Perl 6 is just going off the deep end.
Perl has become too clever for its own good. In a company you just can't plan on many people being motivated enough to learn complex nuances like that. I think a simpler, less context-sensitive, and more orthoganal language is better for long-term, large scale development.
-Kevin
Re:Maby just *to* flexible ? (Score:1)
The vast majority of Perl programmers don't care about readability or maintainability. They care about reducing keystrokes. The few Perl programmers I've met that actually cared about readability and maintainability have since switched to Python. But I guess YMMV...
Re:Maby just *to* flexible ? (Score:1)
It's for much the same reason that mathematicians, scientists and engineers have precise notation, rather than just using plain english. English is fine for added documentation (ie: comments, etc.) but for the actual code, you want something clear and easy to parse (ie: not Perl).
Maby just *to* flexible ? (Score:3)
How about:
$*ARGS is chomped;
Maby it's just me, but I fear that setting properties to variables that affect how fuctions work on them, will greatly decrease the quality of code, available.
Let's just face it, not everybody has even heard of Dijkstra [utexas.edu], let alone know how to write 'proofable' programs.2 C3AF4F2snlbxq'|dc
--
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D727
Re:applescriptish (Score:1)
If you set $\ (or $OUTPUT_FIELD_SEPARATOR if you use the English pragma), you can use whatever you like, including \n.
My guess is Perl 6 will make this a property of filehandles... seems good to me.
--
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:4)
Ya know, it's quite easy to pick up (I got up and running in an afternoon on the basics).
The prefixed identifier is pretty useful as a memory aid, so that you are ALWAYS aware of what type you're dealing with (scalar, array, hash, sub, or typeglob).
To learn what these are, you read one page in a book, and all is clear. Now, how difficult is that??
If you're having trouble extracting values out of variables, then I think you have a weird view of 'difficult'. Pulling a value out of a deep struct in C can be difficult, but using $_ being difficult? Bah.
Still, if you don't like it, fine. Your choice. But, please don't keep saying it's so difficult.
I taught my Girlfriend to use Perl in a day (at the basics), and she's never learned a programming language in her life prior to this. She's now sailing away in it happily.
Cheers,
Malk
Re:PERL: PERL is an Ebonics-Related Language (?) (Score:2)
touch (my $bitch) and die;
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
I just assumed there were some unescaped '<' and '>' characters in there that would make it make sense.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
ode to a small perl of green putty... (Score:3)
Perl may look confusing, but there's nothing like having to work in VB for a week to make you miss the raw power Perl provides.
Some of these language changes disturb me too, but I trust Larry to ultimately make it fairly simple to transition from perl5-think to perl6-think. The transition will break a few things but it sounds like it will increase the power of the language by about as much as perl4 to perl5 did.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Re:PERL: PERL is an Ebonics-Related Language (?) (Score:2)
--
Try This (Score:2)
20 GOTO 10
Be sure to pipe the output through lpr.
--
Re:Shades of PL/I (Score:2)
Shades of PL/I (Score:4)
I was also happy to see Basic's "dim" recycled.
Really guys, haven't we learned anything since oh, I don't know, 1965?
Re:The real strength of Perl (Score:1)
Ah, so instead of programming with a well designed language, well designed libraries, and a community bent on producing a top quality, readable, naturally extensible language, I get to program with.... culture!
I'll go down to the supermarket and get ten tons of yoghurt now, shall I?
</flamebait>
Re:the more I learn about C, the more I like perl (Score:1)
Being a C++ coder, the more I learn C++, the more I like C.
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
Urrr.. I tend to use Perl a lot.
This coming from a Malkavian.
This amuses me tremendously.
--
Evan
what a time for my mod points to expire... (Score:1)
PERL: PERL is an Ebonics-Related Language (?) (Score:5)
Now in Perl 6, one can have such syntax as: my int ($pre, $in, $post) is constant = (0..2);
and: $ARGS is prompts("Search? ");
With the advent of this new "is" construction and the use of passive voice in the code, I think that the following should also be added:
This would allow for such conventions as:
$*ARGS be chomping;
"LibCGI.pl" is being required;
(or if one wants to be smart:)
recognize $foo!;
Just a thought.
the more I learn about C, the more I like perl (Score:2)
I'm finally getting into C by taking a night class at UCLA, and my god, this stuff only gets cooler and cooler. To see the community RFC type thing go on with Perl6 and to watch/hear/readof the ISO committee floundering [cuj.com] with other languages is very interesting too.
Of all the uninspiring things happening with government, the economy, environment, etc these days, I really recommend that any inclined kid such as myself out there get back to basics and check out what their local community college/college extension has to offer. I have, and every time I walk out of class it's like "oh, no shit, that's friggin sweet." Maybe it's just me, but for some of these things, it's just easier to be in an engaging classroom environment rather than to be all by your lonesone with Conway's ''OOP [fatbrain.com].''
Anywho, back to coding [dajoba.com]..
Re:in its defense... (Score:1)
Re:I don't like Perl (Score:1)
Uhm, that's a little bit narrow-minded IMHO. At least, you should throw in also the ability for people other than the original author to quickly understand what the code does, how it does it and change its behaviour according to the new requirements. Requirements usually aren't written in stone, and even if Perl allows you to be extremely quick at producing new working code from zero, having to almost refactor everything at every change request which can't be done by the original author doesn't sound too well to me.
You can say: "but there are comments for this! There is literate programming!", but in the end the final word is always said by code itself, not by the comments (do you expect all programmers to write meaningful and exahustive comments explaining the exact behaviour and side effects of a piece of code? I've given up expecting this some years ago...).
I may be wrong, of course, and honestly I hope I am. I recognize that Perl programmers have better things to do that writing code which is difficult to read, but I wouldn't like to have to say one day "Inside Perl there is a little nifty language..." as it has been said over and over for C++.
If this is going to be the case, expect a Language-X to Perl translator really soon, and Perl being relegated to be the new assembly language of the third millenium (btw, IIRC, this is one of Larry's proposals: using Perl as a cross-platform VM with translators on the top of it from several languages -- after all, this is the current trend).
Re:I don't like Perl (Score:1)
I was talking about languages in general. All languages suck more or less from this point of view (this is why you have many of them - otherwise we'd be all using only the One True Language - which is not the case).
That said, i fear Perl is going in the direction of the creeping featurism that affected C++ some time ago, and IMHO it would be really a pity. Introducing constructs that to save a line or two affects how the code is interpreted 1200 lines below, and then saying "you should use them locally" adds to the list of things that an average developer could get wrong or overlook.
A language with an anal-retentive syntax is definitively not the answer, but nor is trying to support every conceivable programming style (in the sense of the amount of syntax sugar thrown in) in a single language.
So, to answer your question: it is definitively possible to write perfectly readable Perl, exactly in the same manner it is possible to write perfectly readable assembly or C. But people won't write readable code just because it's possible.
Re:Maby just *to* flexible ? (Score:1)
<IRONY> /IRONY >
It is flexible enough so several languages with other paradigms are implemented on it, it is cross platform in the sense that there are decent JVM for the main platforms, and making readable programs only requires disciplined programmers. Maintenance is easily done because everything is well documented with comments and on dead trees.
<
It is worth noting that it requires years for a coder to get the experience needed to be `disciplined'. Expecially, it requires lots of debugging other's code. Even you weren't born as a `disciplined' programmer, but you became disciplined like everyone else, day by day.
In the meanwhile, either the `still not disciplined coder' refrain itself from using languages requiring more discipline (which is a fancy way just to say that some languages are definitively not for beginners), or (s)he use the language anyway, with great headaches for the guy doing maintenance.
It's good for a language to be flexible, but trying to support all coding styles at once just for the sake of it is pure evil. That's why there are multiple languages out there.
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
Re:Go take a languages class. (Score:1)
Anyway, do some research before you deride.
Re:I don't like Perl (Score:2)
I know you're a troll, but from O'Reilly [oreilly.com]
Re:unusual... (Score:3)
Re:death of the diamond operator? (Score:1)
Rule 2: When the boss is Wrong, the first rule takes effect.
Re:Shades of PL/I (Score:2)
Namely, constants, multi-dimensional arrays, data-typing have no place in a RAD prototype or a 5 line shell-script. But they _are_ useful in large-scale development (in data-type validation or in optimization). The idea of an integer multi-dimensional array, for example, allows the savings of potentially megs of memory. For one-shot operations or an occasional web page, this is an acceptible cost, but performance-minded developers will want to squeeze those 10's 50's of percents of improvement without switching to another language.
So what happens? Bolted on code.. You can't write a compiler that won't work with old code, and you can't require all users to learn entirely new code.. Thus evolution takes place (humans still have an appendix, ya know). I think it gives the language more character.. For example, anybody know why we have "y/x/y/" or $$? Legacy syntaxes that weren't hurting anybody by lingering on.
So Larry is laboring on that trade-off of clearity of new features verses compatibility (both in code and mind-set). The above syntax really involves attribute setting. The syntax may seem bizzar (and we'll probably lose several developers), but the net result will be an extension that is consistent and powerful.
Perl was and is perfect for the task for which it was invented. Additionally, it does a pretty darn good job of web development and small-scale scripted-applications (especially as wrappers). It's been tweaked to the point that it barely looks like a scripting language. It has an incredible freely available module library which furthers the notion of RAD. I can't say that it won't go the same way as COBOL (a la archaic legacy maintanance issues), but it's definately had an interesting life thus far. And at least we won't have lost the source code.
What I want to know is (Score:3)
God, I love that command.
Re:Shades of PL/I (Score:1)
Optimisation?????????????? Typing like this will be an optional feature, but it will speed up certain programs (e.g. numerical routines).
Re:Perl (Score:2)
Re:applescriptish (Can be done...) (Score:1)
$\="<br
print "Hello World";
Result is:
Hello World<br
You can also define the defaults for input records, for outputting arrays or hashes, etc.
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:2)
while ($tickets_sold
chomp($purchase);
$tickets_sold += $purchase;
}
If it was taken from the book, why are there 2 syntax errors in the first line? Try again.
This isn't actually that good an example of what my gripe is, but look at it !!! I mean, what's wrong with a READABLE example like..... my ($blob) = 0; while ($blob 10) { print "$blob\n"; }
--
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:2)
example (this is lifted straight out of the book)...... The 'while' loop..........
while ($tickets_sold
chomp($purchase);
$tickets_sold += $purchase;
}
If it was taken from the book, why are there 2 syntax errors in the first line? Try again.
This isn't actually that good an example of what my gripe is, but look at it !!! I mean, what's wrong with a READABLE example like.....
Your syntax is wrong, how about this?
my ($blob) = 0;
for $blob1 ($blob..10)
{
  print "$blob1\n";
}
Your arguments would have much more power if you actually had ANY IDEA what you are talking about.
--
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
%I was the global variable, holding stuff like $I{dbh} - the database handle.
It's fairly useful having one global variable in a small program, but it becomes cludgy once you modularize.
Perl be Yoda (Score:2)
Re:RFC in Perl 7 (Score:1)
LABEL1:
...
LABEL2:
...
LABEL3:
...
GO FROM LABEL1 TO LABEL2
GO FROM LABEL1 TO LABEL3
As you can see, this simple but powerful idiom supports threads too!
(Btw, the idea of "go from" was indeed from Intercal's "come from", a much-recommended language I couldn't remember the name of. Thread-support has been suggested in that area before.)
- Steeltoe
RFC in Perl 7 (Score:2)
LABEL1:
.....
go from LABEL1
By using multiple GO-FROMs you can even make threads! It's powerful, intuitive and obfuscated. Just the right thing for Perl 7.
If you think "go from" is too elaborate, you could probably use ${LABEL1}-> instead. Unless that's taken of course.
- Steeltoe
RFC, like request for comment? for real? (Score:1)
so whats up? Does this guy actually has to audacity to call something an RFC and actually just mean request for comment?
-Jon
Re:RFC in Perl 7 (Score:1)
Contexts... (Score:1)
Re:Contexts... (Score:1)
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:1)
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:2)
Re:Go take a languages class. (Score:2)
synatical (sic) declaration is not the same as typing - it is only an aid to the compiler.
Syntactic declaration is highly valuable to the maintenance programmer. It makes a believable statement about a data object. Misery is reading a program in a language where there are no type declarations on function parameters, but types do matter. Perl 5 comes to mind. Effectively, parameters have types, but nothing but comments (if any) tells you what they are. This is especially painful for object-oriented Perl. Smalltalk had the same problem. Attempts to deal with this problem via comments usually fail, unless some stringent management regieme is imposed. Such a regieme is usually worse than a declaration system.
Declarations force a nonlinear thinking style on programmers; you're continually jumping back and forth between declarations and executable statements, which are often in physically different places. It's unwieldy in text editing, and distracts from thinking about the executable code. And then there are the "header file" / separate compilation consistency problems. These are the issues that drive programmers to languages with lightweight or no declarations.
On the other hand, dynamic typing tends to defer error detection until the program blows up in operation, instead of detecting it during compilation. Some people think this is good, and some don't. As program size grows, it's more of a problem.
These are the sorts of issues that affect user acceptance. It helps to think of programming as a user interface problem. In fact, user interface testing of programming language constructs, where programmers are videotaped programming and their keystrokes logged, could be quite valuable. I've not heard of that being done.
The language life cycle (Score:4)
Wash, rinse, repeat.
C went through this evolution, taking about 25 years to do so. Originally, everything in C was basically a 16-bit int. Structs were just a set of offsets. There was no type-checking; any struct field could be used with any pointer. Then came K&R C, which added a type system but made the syntax context-dependent, because the original language hadn't contemplated user-defined types. ANSI C made the type system consistent. C++ added objects. ISO C++ added templates, collections, and lots of other stuff. Now the language and its manuals are huge.
LISP also went through this cycle, again taking about 20-25 years to go from LISP 1.5 to Common LISP. So did FORTRAN and BASIC. Perl is now well along into this cycle.
If you put in the type system first, as Java, Python, Pascal, Ada, and Smalltalk did, the end result is cleaner, but the language gets an initial reputation of being complicated. Perl, though, has now grown to be more complex than any of those languages, so it's on the downslope of the cycle.
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:2)
On a funny note, it's probably so people couldn't post derogatory statements about slashcode (pre-bender) that had examples in them (I finally figured out what $S is but wtf is $I?).
On a not-so-funny note, it's not just that "junk" chars are verboten, but the lack of a 'pre' or 'code' tag with which to meaningfully render code is a real bummer. Especially in this section, a priori a code-focused one. I'd propose relaxing the restrictions on 'code' or 'pre' here but I'm sure it would be a pain to implement[1].
[1] yeah, yeah. trolls abusing it for page screwage. cry me a river, and while you're at it just set threshold = [1 .. 3]. ;-)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
Want to go see Damien ? (Score:3)
More details are at http://programmers.luv.asn.au/
Re:typed languages. (Score:1)
Hitchhiker's guide to Perl (Score:5)
There is another theory which states that this has already happened...
There is yet a third theory which states that both the first two theories were concocted by a wily editor of the Camel Book in order to increase the universal level of uncertainty and paranoia, and so boost sales of the book.
Perl 6? But I'm angry now! (Score:1)
--As for the other threads here about how hard it is to learn Perl. They're all hard. Perl, Python, C, Hell
---
Perl is the crack... (Score:1)
Re:I don't like Perl (Score:1)
Python? (no jihad this time) (Score:2)
IMHO the two languages focus on different things. Perl vs. Python is like poetry vs. technical docs: the former has a lot of artistic freedom, and some things can be made more powerful/compact, but it is difficult to use properly, more so in larger projects. Or you could even say they are like Gimp vs. LaTeX as writing tools. Usually I prefer the latter, when I want to focus on content and not worry about formatting, but sometimes you just need that creative freedom.
--
Go take a languages class. (Score:1)
Interesting selection of type-first systems at the end. No one loves Java; you might want to read the early years of Python (and since the semantic underpinnings of Python are similar to Perl, it's not a good example); Pascal - the bane of the 80s; Ada - ha! perhaps the worst, least loved language of all time; Smalltalk - the first system to do objects correctly, this is definitely 'cleaner'. But none of them were inspired type systems, and I can't say typing was 'first' as you said. Only Smalltalk is a wonder of cleanliness. Python is swimming in the same mire as Perl, Pascal - the language that wouldn't die, Ada - the great mistake, Java - the wonders of marketing.
You seem to have a real interest in languages. I urge you to research the background and modern issues, as I would enjoy continuing a real debate here on /.
unusual... (Score:1)
Re:Go take a languages class. (Score:1)
And yes, theory matters! I'm not going to step into the mire of 'acceptance', which will never be formalized; but theory is not to be ignored. Theory translates directly into language structures and semantics. Any good programmer cares about semantics.
Again, I don't think you've seen what a good implicit typing system (like the MLs) can do for you. I'd argue for a while on this point, but /. is the great time-suck, and I need to catch a plane. More next week.
hmm.... (Score:1)
Thanks for the info, though.
Randal Schwartz, are you out there? (Score:3)
This is so confusing. Just the sight of @_[0] to mean a scalar, the second argument to a sub, makes me feel dizzy, and the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Please, find Damian and Larry and wake them up somehow. Cold water, dope slap, whatever it takes!
Whew. I hate those early-morning nightmares. Both Larry Wall and Damian Conway were in this dream, wearing dark suits and Ray-Bans, and, and....
Re:I don't think I'm confused.... (Score:2)
Perl proudly exists for the benifit of people who like to embrace "too many ways". It allows you to write crappy code that works while you are learning, and grow as a programmer while producing functional software. Speaking for myself, when I first jumped into writing in Perl for actual applications at my job, I found that it was only a matter of two or three weeks that my code got so much better that I cringed every time I looked at the stuff I wrote on day 1 of the project. A couple months later, I could not stand to look at the crap I had written after 3 weeks. But the point is, all of that lousy code from my days of baby-steps still worked. I could go back and clean it up if I needed to, or I could just leave that pile of spaghetti lying there, functioning perfectly, allowing me to move on to more pressing matters.
If you want your choices limited, to force you into mostly good coding habits, use Java or something.
I often think that the only reason anyone uses vi is so that they can point at people who don't use it and giggle.
There are several reasons why some folks like vi:
1. It is everywhere. Pretty much all *n[iu]x OS has it rolled in, so whether you are sitting at a Solaris box, a Linux box, an old SVR4 box, you can count on vi being available. This allows you to learn one text editor, and use it on any (non-MS) server.
2. It is fairly powerful. Once you learn it, you can do some pretty fast editing of multiple files. vi is not the only editor that supports expressions, sed, awk, etc., but it does it fairly well.
3. It feels a lot like the CLI of the more popular shells. Anybody who learns UNIX will already know a lot of what they need to know to use vi.
4. A lot of first-year college kids are taught how to use it, so it is fairly universal
All that said, there are "better" choices out there (the cheering section for emacs continues to swell), and vi is mostly used due to laziness... but then again, laziness is often considered a virtue in the CS world, is it not?
I'll refrain from getting much deeper into it than that, because nothing in the universe is more tedious that a debate about choice of text editor.
Perl is not THAT bad. But why isn't the obvious obvious ?
Because Perl was not written for doing the obvious. It was written for solving challenging problems. If you evaluate all languages according to how hard "Hello, world!" is to write, you are excluding the mort powerful features of all of them. Yes, all the $_ and \@ stuff looks, at a glance, like it is harder than it should be. The same could be said of the way C handles pointers. Some people find it hard to wrap their heads around Java's use of classes.
All I can say is, use Perl for some hard jobs, instead of just trying in out on "obvious" tasks, and check out how much time you can sometimes save, once you embrace the language. You will be a Perl zealot in no time. (After all, the biggest zealots for anything are always the converted critics.)
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:4)
Perl is an interpreted language that lets you quickly hack big jobs with small effort.
C++ is a compiled, object-based language, designed for projects that require the advantages of the OO model and the speed of pre-compiled binary code.
A good all-purpose programmer should learn both. Asking which is better is like asking if a Mack truck is better than a Lotus Esprit Turbo... the answer depends largely on what you want to do with it.
Re:RFC, like request for comment? for real? (Score:1)
Yes.
Perl is very easy to learn (Score:2)
To program Perl as if it was Perl is much harder and I've yet to master it after two years of using it, but I did learn to produce useful programs in it in an afternoon.
TWW
Bloat? (Score:2)
TWW
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (ADDITIONAL) (Score:2)
which is why we have use strict. it makes a lot of strange "what the hell is my variable doing?!?!" type problems go away instantly. and, as with everything else in perl, you don't have to use it if you don't want to.
Re:Bloat? (Score:1)
FP.
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Re:if you gonna quota, quota right. (Score:1)
Read further. 'are' may well be introduced as a synonym for 'is'. The editorial comment was a forward-looking one, was it not?
FP.
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Re:Am I the only one... (Score:1)
Moderators - put down the spoon/inner-tube/whatever, and get upmodding!
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Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:3)
If you like C++ or BASIC then use them instead, I really believe people should choose the language that fits their way of thinking, I enjoy using perl and find it makes sense, you may prefer C++ - that doesnt make either of them better or worse than the other.
The beauty of Perl. (Score:2)
Perl isn't everybody's cup of tea. There are elements of syntax that can be somewhat oblique. There are aspects that are positively obscure compared to C or Java. However, there are some fantastic points about it too. First and foremost, learning Perl is a distinctly easier task than C, Java or any other higher level language. Simple tasks in C are very simple, but anything beyond the basics is extremely taxing for the beginner. Once you're into Perls way of working you're sorted. Perl also has a tendancy to be shown as a block of regexp code too. This doesn't help.
You mention that the example 'won't even bloody compile', inferring you're used to some other compiled langauge. This is another failing of Perl. Its syntacically(sp?) really quite different to everything else. Coming to Perl from another language is difficult, more so than Pascal to C for example.
In the end, live and let live. If you can't get on with Perl then don't. There are many other options open to you.
applescriptish (Score:3)
First of all, I really wish they'd put in a println function, I really hate typing "\n"
but then again
sub println{ print "$_[0]\n";}
print "hello";
in other thoughts, the 'is' in
%node{VALUE} = $val is Found(0);
kinda scares me because it reminds me of applescript. I dont remember applescript, but I've done some sizeable things in it, and its so close to a natural language that you get confused and start programming in english. Its good that spoken language and programming languages look so different, otherwise I'd accidentally start speaking in code.
TIP (To Insure PROMPTness) (Score:2)
In cases like this, I use STDERR for my prompting, because
This is where someone should tell me it's OK, because there's Another Way To Do It where prompts binds STDERR instead.
Re:Maby just *to* flexible ? (Score:3)
Well, the fact is, the slightly smarter consumer can manage their credit wothout being provided with credit management tools.
Perl is extremely flexible and powerful. Good perl programmers can manage their code in such a way as to make it readable in 6 months and 9 months and 12 months. It's a matter of dicipline. Code management should not have to be built into the language. We're not talking about COBOL here, after all. If you need code and structure management, lay it out nicely, get a good editor, etc. Perl is intended to provide results and fill a need, which it does vary well As Larry says "It makes the easy jobs easy and the hard jobs possible". I fully agree. Without Perl, I'd me doing admin work in awk and sed, cuz C would just be a waste of time in that context.
Program and code management should be on the back of the programmer not the interpreter/compiler, regardless of what language you're using. Flexibility is power and power is good. the trick is to find disciplined programmers who can manage it without special tools provided to them as if they weren't expected to be capable in their own right.
--CTH
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Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (Score:2)
No, not really. It is not an easy to learn language for C programmers or new programmers. For C programmers there is a conceptual barrier that they need to pass to get the feel of the scripting languages.
The power of perl comes from that; ones you master perl, it is easy (and fun) to write programs.
I aggree that the perl documentation is not completely newbie friendly, and it probably shouldn't. It is one of the most useful language documentation by the way. It helped me a lot, especially the Perl FAQ's.
There are books like "Learning Perl" for learning perl. If you try to learn perl from the book "Programming Perl", which is a language reference, you obviously hit a stone wall at fifth page or so.
Re:Perl ? Mmmmm......... (ADDITIONAL) (Score:2)
br. It should declare wha t$ticket_sold is and then do the while loop.
The Lottery:
Re:Contexts... (Score:3)
butMust -> learntodoit() or die "Knowing I have failed.\n";
Re:Well, yes I do (Score:2)
Well, this isn't exactly the same, since it returns a new collection without mutating the old one, but in Dolphin Smalltalk one could do:
foo collect: [:x | (x beginsWith: 'comment') ifTrue: ['! ' , x] ifFalse: [x]].
so I'd have to answer 1, about 20 seconds, and yes. It's pretty easy in Common Lisp too.
Re:Well, yes I do (Score:2)
I don't think Dolphin has a regex class built in, but I'd be surprised if such weren't readily available for Smalltalk - there are some pretty sizeable code archives out there. And perhaps some of the bigger implementations do have them built in.
I was thinking about it some more, and it's not to hard to do in an ML either (and at least some of these do have regexes included - SML does, and OCaml does too):
map (fn x => if String.isPrefix "comment" x then concat ["! ", x] else x) foo;
I'm not so familiar with the ML regexes, but I suspect it's merely a matter (instead of the String.isPrefix "comment" x part) doing something along the lines of (ML pseudocode follows :-)
Regex.match (Regex.regex "^[0-9][A-Z][A-Z] etc.") x. I don't know offhand what the exact syntax would be, though. Not as compact as Perl, to be sure, but certainly nothing difficult.
it's getting worse (Score:2)
Re:I don't like Perl (Score:2)
At least that's been my experience.
--
"Fuck your mama."
The real strength of Perl (Score:5)
The real strength of Perl lay not in its technical construct, or its syntax, or even in the vast set of modules and libraries available to it. The truest strength of Perl is its culture. Larry Wall, from very early on, has tried to foster a real, positive community.
Perl6 is yet another cultural extension to Perl5. The RFC process was very messy, disorganized, and perhaps a little out-of-control. Indeed, as Larry said, he spent several months mentally thrashing as he tried to grok all of the RFC's. But that is the way he wanted it. The RFC process was a picture of a real-life war-room or think-tank.
The end result will be very exciting, I believe. The Perl6 documents, to date, have capitalized on cultural strengths of the Perl community.
Truly, Perl6 is built on the most important resource available to Larry: the huge diversity of Perl programmers all over the world. That diversity has made Perl5 a great, legendary language. I think it will make Perl6 even better. As Perl advocates, I think our best effort is in being inclusive, rather than exclusive, in our thinking.