OK, maybe it's not exactly seven, but I needed a catchy title for this advocacy about Perl that I want to share with the community. Not that I would refrain from appropriate critizism now and then.
Why should you use Perl?
- it's compact
- it's got powerful regular expressions
- it's compatible (you can still use Perl 4 code vice versa)
- it's sophisticated and helps clarify my thoughts
- it's flexible and more open-minded than certain perlmonks
- it's already loads of readymade code (beginners can use script archives as a first step to it)
I don't have to talk about its disadvantages here. As Perl's becoming less popular, webspace with real perl interpreter can be quite costly. I'm not talking about readymade CGI collection here.
Anyway, I hope Perl 6 will not be too complex. Now Perl has all its advantages, it's quite comprehensive. Make it too complex and the people will turn to other languages. Maybe we need even simplify Perl. But then it's losing its flexibility instead.
Question
What is your favorite reason for Perl?
Where do you want to go toady today?
Prove it or shut up. And, I mean prove that a webserver with Perl installed is more expensive to operate than a webserver with ASP installed. Otherwise, you are spouting shit from your ass and I am not your toilet.
it's already loads of readymade code (beginners can use script archives as a first step to it)
I hope you aren't referring to the plethora of crappy code on the web that contributes to massive security holes ...
Anyway, I hope Perl 6 will not be too complex.
Fuck off. And I mean that in the worst possible way. If you don't want complex, go code in VB. I program in Perl precisely because it's complex ... when I need it to be. It makes the hard things easy and the impossible things merely hard.
------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.
Then there are Damian modules.... *sigh* ... that's not about being less-lazy -- that's about being on some really good drugs -- you know, there is no spoon. - flyingmoose
I shouldn't have to say this, but any code, unless otherwise stated, is untested
1) have biases against a certain technology (Perl in this case)
2) are cavalier in their comments.
However, it is never appropriate to respond with offensive language, especially in such an aggressive manner. If you want to reply to comments made by another person, fine. But please do so in a polite manner.
davidj
A case in point is the asssertion that Perl is on the decline in popularity. I am not saying whether it is or not, though I have my opinion. However, there has been no attempt on the part of the OP to even start to back that statement up. This is a statement he has made on at least two other occassions. He has been challenged every time and resorted to ad hominem attacks in response.
If he wishes to engage in this kind of discussion, that's his prerogative. I have supported that prerogative in the past, against the better judgement of my peers. However, I will respond in kind, and that includes the aggressive manner.
Please note that he was the one who chose, over the past year, to take such obviously antagonistic stands. That is his prerogative. But, I will not protect him from the consequences of those choices, one of which is the tone of my response. Please feel free to disagree.
Update: fixed OP's name as per sporty's reply.
------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.
Then there are Damian modules.... *sigh* ... that's not about being less-lazy -- that's about being on some really good drugs -- you know, there is no spoon. - flyingmoose
I shouldn't have to say this, but any code, unless otherwise stated, is untested
There is a history involved here, between Wassercrat and the daily posters on this site. The OP has chosen to take a very antagonistic and puerile attitude towards the members of this site.Without commenting on the merit or lack thereof of your argument, I find it offensive that you don't make it for yourself only, but shield behind "the daily posters on this site" and "the members of this site".
I doubt that you could get all the monks who post daily (much less all registered monks) to agree on anything.
>>it's already loads of readymade code (beginners can use script archives as a first step to it)
>I hope you aren't referring to the plethora of crappy code on the web that contributes to massive security holes ...
So where is best to look if I really want to use something readmade? Being more into webdesign than programming btw
- Buy a book. O'Reilly has a ton of good books with many many examples. And that doesn't count the "Learn in XX days" series. This even has the side-benefit of teaching you.
- Use a good ISP. Pair.com (and most other ISPs) will provide you with a number of applications readymade and supported 24x7. Most of these apps you are already paying for with your subscription.
- Hire someone. I maintain a list of monks on my homenode who've indicated a willingness to do contract work.
------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.
Then there are Damian modules.... *sigh* ... that's not about being less-lazy -- that's about being on some really good drugs -- you know, there is no spoon. - flyingmoose
I shouldn't have to say this, but any code, unless otherwise stated, is untested
Although oddly enough I recall the first time I saw that phrase it ended with "Please insert quarter to try again", but I can't find that phrase on the net anywhere.
___________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.
As Perl's becoming less popular, webspace with real perl interpreter can be quite costly.Prove it or shut up. And, I mean prove that a webserver with Perl installed is more expensive to operate than a webserver with ASP installed. Otherwise, you are spouting shit from your ass and I am not your toilet.
Dude, leave your bitterness at the door. He didn't say the operational costs of a webserver were higher -- he said finding "webspace" that let's you run perl is getting expensive. He's right. The dot-come days of web hosting companies with cheap shell accounts and web hosting that let you run whatever you want are dying fast.
He didn't say the operational costs of a webserver were higher -- he said finding "webspace" that let's you run perl is getting expensive.So you're not going to prove it either? Just as i'm typing this i'm looking at an ad for http://pair.com/ and they're cheap (and finding them was effortless).
Sure guy was rude, but bitter? Wassercrat/s is bitter.
What you'll find, though, is that cheap hosts have no problem letting you run PHP, but they won't offer mod_perl. So yes, Perl is there. But you won't get the throughput and performance that you will if you switch languages.
The reason is that it is harder to lock down mod_perl than PHP in a shared Apache server. Which has nothing to do with anything that wassercrat(s) was complaining about.
Why should you use Perl?
(...) Anyway, I hope Perl 6 will not be too complex. Now Perl has all its advantages, it's quite comprehensive. Make it too complex and the people will turn to other languages. Maybe we need even simplify Perl. But then it's losing its flexibility instead.
- it's compact
- it's sophisticated and helps clarify my thoughts
- it's flexible and more open-minded than certain perlmonks
On the subject of compactness and simplicity vs. complexity: Scheme is, syntactically, insanely compact. (So is Common LISP, MacLISP, and all those other parenthesis-laden languages with lambdas and macros -- real macros, not silly preprocessor text-substitution crap -- and continuations and first-class functions and....) LISPen are comprehensive, flexible, terse, and sophisticated. Add true lazy evaluation to a LISP with real (not hygenic) macros and you probably have the most powerful programming language ever constructed. But everyone's afraid of them: why? My guess is, because they look weird to people trained in C-like languages. It's difficult to write Scheme that looks like C (or Java, or whatever), so moving to Scheme when all you know is procedural programming takes a lot of effort.
Perl 6 doesn't need to be simple (if it did, Larry could just slap a regex special form onto Scheme and call it a day) to be accepted by mainstream hackers: it needs to admit standard procedural programming. I don't know about the rest of the monks, but my first Perl programs looked very much like C (it took me about three months to realize that I could get more done with string interpolation and print than with stdlib-style printfs scattered around my code, and longer to learn how to use foreach-style loops instead of explicit indexing). When you want to get something done now, being able to fall back upon familiar habits is a virtue for the new language.
The bottom line, though, is that languages aren't what make programming hard (although a language that doesn't let you do what you want will make your job harder); programming is intrinsically hard. See also node 76871.
--
F
o
x
t
r
o
t
U
n
i
f
o
r
m
Found a typo in this node? /msg me
% man 3 strfry
20040618 Unconsidered by Corion: Keep: 27/ Edit: 0/ Delete: 25
- 1. It shows people do feed the trolls.
- 2. because the original crap posting still includes some prejudice I've often heard from would-be programmers
- 3. Why did you reply anyway?
- 4. After all dragonchild was right and I think he can say fuck as often as he wants.
- 5. - 7. ???
Better still: Moderators should be able to close a thread and finish it with a good pointer to FAQ!
Of course, you may feel (as the considerer apparently did) that this is "unarguably and undeniably trollish", but I disagree that it meets a reasonable standard for deletion.
If God had meant us to fly, he would *never* have given us the railroads.
--Michael Flanders
Oh, I thought it was more "Is *clearly* inflammatory, abusive, and otherwise over the edge of professional disagreement" than "unarguably and undeniably trollish".
I would add though, that it doesn't have to be inflammatory AND over the edge of professional disagreement to be abusive and thus worth deleting. Abusive things should not be kept, regardless of their other merits.
Well, you could argue inflammatory, though honestly I'm dubious. Abusive, though? There's only one node in this thread I'd call abusive, and the root node ain't it. Stupid, very much so, but that (thank goodness) isn't grounds for reaping.
I'd stick with trollish, in the pre-slashdot sense, if I were arguing for its deletion, but honestly I don't see a point to deleting it. What harm does it do? Other than make people with better things to do waste time arguing over its deletability, of course... ;-)
If God had meant us to fly, he would *never* have given us the railroads.
--Michael Flanders
- It might turn into a reasonable discussion on compactness vs. complexity if people don't reflexively consider-for-delete it when they read the author's name.
- Ignoring uncomfortable points of view like "Perl is losing popularity" isn't exactly the healthiest way of fighting them.
- "I don't like Wassercrat" isn't a good reason to try to reap a given post.
- It's bound to provoke a "community standards vs. free speech" debate, either in the CB or a set of posts, and lower the signal:noise ratio far more than just letting this post slide.
- It'd be a waste of the editors' time.
- There is no reason number six.
- Nobody who's advocated deleting this node has given a
good reason beyond shouting "it sucks!" as loud as they can.
(I'm not considering dragonchild's reply
here, as it at least begins to address the node's
content.)
Edit: Clarification: dragonchild's post doesn't advocate deleting the OP, which is why I'm not considering it. It also happens to attack the OP's content, which I think is a nice touch. I'm not ignoring it simply because it's a counterexample to my argument. :-)
Or were you just being sarcastic, hoping to score some points based on Wassercrat's bad reputation?
--
F
o
x
t
r
o
t
U
n
i
f
o
r
m
Found a typo in this node? /msg me
% man 3 strfry
Please, vote for "keep" in the "nodes to consider" section, even if you ++ or -- one of the authors. Help to keep this place an open discussion forum. IMHO, Perl monks easily can afford one or two trolls without harm.
This "consider-for-delete" stuff scares me!!! ... In my opinion, quite too many people voted to delete Dragonchilds and Wassercrats node. I am not that happy with both nodes, but the intolerance I see in "nodes to consider" is pretty scary.I voted keep on both, but then, I think it's important that people can say annoying, uninformed and/or rude things here.
I can imagine people not wanting obvious trollery, irrelevant posts or rude language, though, and I expect them to vote for deletion if they see it.
As I recall, the "keep" votes are in the majority at the moment, so please keep calm.
Joost
I strongly doubt that Perl is indeed becoming less popular over the net. During my stay here I have seen countless amounts of people who are new to the language and in search of help. If anything, Perl is still growing strongly. In my own community I have had over two dozen people begin coding in Perl after they were first introduced, and they happen to love every minute of it.
Now when the issue of Wassercrat comes into play, this will of course take a very different turn. I can understand dragon's aggravation towards Wasser, but still, we shouldn't continue to feed his own ego in a sense. If someone decides they think Perl isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread, then fine, everyone is entitled to an opinion. But when it gets to the point that people begin to feed him, a game is made out of it, which seems to torment a majority of the community. We cannot automatically reap all of the nodes Wassercrat creates, this would be un-fair towards him reguardless of his current opinions. As much as I have read so far, he hasn't said anything racially offending, threatened others, or done anything overly offending in those senses.
Just don't feed him when it comes around to it. It only creates more strife.
Shinwa : Did that penguin just meow at me?
Snuggy : What hunny?
Shinwa : nuffin' luff...
I can only follow my own nose, of course, but I work for a company that deals with medical information. (I'm not sure I'm allowed to mention the name, so I won't. Shakespeare had the right attitude about lawyers.) Recently we started offering our data to customers in new formats with our home-made Perl parsers. The customers have jumped on it with both feet, and those who are new to it want to learn more about Perl, because it is so compact and (for what we're doing) simple.
Again, this is a small anecdote from someone who programs in Perl (among other languages), but taking one thing with another, I'd hardly say Perl is 'less popular'. It may not garner attention from journalists, but by and large, journalists are journalists because they can't be trusted with snake control in Ireland. Has anyone ever noticed that when a technology writer gets an idea, he generally gets it all wrong?
--
tbone1, YAPS (Yet Another Perl Schlub)
And remember, if he succeeds, so what.
- Chick McGee
...webspace with real perl interpreter can be quite costly.
Actually, I've found that this isn't true. You just need to shop around, like you do with anything else...
As Perl's becoming less popular, webspace with real perl interpreter can be quite costly.Man, they have been saying that Perl is becoming less popular for at least half a dozen years. I only wish it to be true. But certain channels are still flocked with non-programmers doing webby stuff who think that Perl == web. I wish they'd go away. I'd wish someone would tell them Python and Java are much better languages for them.
Abigail