From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Jan 19 19:29:32 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from pc1-dale5-0-cust136.not.cable.ntl.com (pc1-dale5-0-cust136.not.cable.ntl.com [80.1.76.136]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 727A437B405 for ; Sat, 19 Jan 2002 19:29:21 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 78057 invoked from network); 20 Jan 2002 03:29:19 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO matt.thebigchoice.com) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 20 Jan 2002 03:29:19 -0000 Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 03:29:19 +0000 From: Matt H To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: what is a good language for system administration? Message-Id: <20020120032919.73740ae4.freebsd-questions@cuntbubble.com> In-Reply-To: <003201c1a158$852912a0$0273150a@woodstock.lanalyse.com> References: <003201c1a158$852912a0$0273150a@woodstock.lanalyse.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.7.0 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386--freebsd4.4) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 21:16:41 -0500 "Ron Hensley" wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > Perl is a hideously ugly language that should be taken out and shot. Since > > your soliciting opinions :-) Python is a much easier, cleaner, and nicer > > language for sys admin tasksfor me then perl. > > > Chuckle, I totally agree there. Ive been an avid C/C++ Programmer for many > many years. > I looked over Perl and just couldn't get past all that using of > RegExpressions just to parse > an array of chars (String) and much prefer the C Standard Library of > functions. well you'll be really missing out of you dont have regular expressions in your armoury > The big place Perl shines is the ability to work with operating system level > commands, however > It's very easy to do the same in C with popen(), though a tad more wordy of > course. > > I found Java/Javascripting to be equally as ugly in syntax. java & javascript are only vaguely related i find java cumbersome (all that casting, and then you change the datatype ugh!) but javascript is great it's outrageously untyped with rampant polymorphism which is great for passing arbitrary datatypes about > I admit though Perl has its virtues and following and I wouldn't mind > getting past the hurdles of learning it. if you're a programmer then it doesn't take long to pick up the basics I'm no perlite, by a long stretch, but I've written filters & stuff for mod_perl in Apache just by understanding the examples & hacked around in IRC scripts; (ending a line with ; is a sign you've been coding too long!) > As has been stated there's an awful lot of existing code in Perl > to make use of for those fluent in it. yes, there will come a time when an installer with be broken or a users cgi script won't run and someone will be asking you to sort it out. Spend an evening reading some tutorials. The perl man pages at www.perldoc.com are the definitive guide. The perl people are generally friendly and warm, which comes across both in the documentation and the language. I still prefer python though To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message