Re: Introduction

I think it is fair to say that this post falls under the category of
"Perl Advocacy", which is fine in and of itself. However, as such, it
does not belong on the Subversion development mailing list, especially
since it does not address Subversion in any way.

If this thread must continue, please continue it elsewhere, unless it
bears some specific relevance to Subversion development, as was
previously asked.

Deven T. Corzine writes:
> On Sat, 3 Mar 2001, Greg Stein wrote:
>
> > Your defensiveness of the language is not required. Every response that I've
> > seen has recognized Perl as a "force", although people dislike it
> > personally. Those people will recognize that it has utility. Case studies in
> > its success are not required. Even if every response was that people hate
> > it, it still does not discount that it was useful in certain environments.
>
> I love Perl. I've programmed in many languages for many years, but none
> have approached the power and expressiveness of Perl. Sure, the language
> can be abused, but what language can't? (How many years has the IOCCC been
> running now?) It's easy to write bad Perl OR to write good Perl.
>
> > Personally, I think Perl is great for short text transform applications.
> > Once you need data structures, though, it really breaks down, and I'll
> > absolutely recommend Python. For myself, I know Python and its libraries
> > well enough to do text transforms efficiently and effectively in Python. I
> > don't expect that of others, so Perl is typically recommended.
>
> This was true for Perl 4. Perl 4's lack of references made it very hard
> (though not impossible) to implement a large application. Perl 5, on the
> other hand, is quite adept at manipulating data structures of arbitrary
> complexity; this is one of Perl's strengths, not a weakness.
>
> Perl is excellent at text transformations, of course. But to suggest that
> covers the applicable domain of the language is as inaccurate as suggesting
> that Emacs is only good for basic text editing. Yes, it's good for that,
> but it's only the tip of the iceberg.
>
> I don't know where all this hostility toward Perl is coming from here; the
> complaints about "Other People's Perl" are a poor way to evaluate the value
> of the language -- a bad programmer will write bad code, regardless of the
> language used. I've seen bad code in every language I've used. You can't
> force bad programmers to write good code, after all...
>
> Deven
>

-- 
Lee P. W. Burgess  <<!>>  Manipulate eternity. Power is a symphony:
Programmer         <<!>>  elaborate, enormous, essential.
Red Bean Software  <<!>>  Dream the moment with a fiddle in summer 
lefty@red-bean.com <<!>>  and a knife in winter.