From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Jun 22 15:16:28 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from heechee.tobez.org (254.adsl0.ryv.worldonline.dk [213.237.10.254]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CF0B737B427 for ; Fri, 22 Jun 2001 15:16:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tobez@tobez.org) Received: by heechee.tobez.org (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 4E334543D; Sat, 23 Jun 2001 00:16:12 +0200 (CEST) Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 00:16:12 +0200 From: Anton Berezin To: Terry Lambert Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav , j mckitrick , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: most complex code in BSD? Message-ID: <20010623001612.C53155@heechee.tobez.org> Mail-Followup-To: Anton Berezin , Terry Lambert , Dag-Erling Smorgrav , j mckitrick , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG References: <20010622232942.A53155@heechee.tobez.org> <200106222147.OAA28698@usr06.primenet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <200106222147.OAA28698@usr06.primenet.com>; from tlambert@primenet.com on Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 09:47:44PM +0000 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 09:47:44PM +0000, Terry Lambert wrote: > > > Anything with "perl" code in it: it's a write-only programming > > > language, useful only for throw-away code. > > > > Wow, wow. Opinions are strong here, aren't they? ;-) > If you can show me tools to enforce style and correctness, I am > willing to recant. I am not going to comment on the tools to enforce correctness, as I am not aware of any non-toy project which was programmed using such tools. As for enforcing style, that's different. You seem to imply here, and please correct me if I am wrong, that some of the existing ways of doing things in Perl should not be there, because everything can be done using much limited number of ways. I disagree with this opinion. Like any other language, Perl has a number of idiomatic ways of doing things. Such idioms are immediately recognized (and used) by any programmer who knows the language. The problem with Perl is that the sheer number of these idioms is larger than in the majority of other languages. This leads to a fact, that Perl itself is a big language, and therefore it is difficult to learn Perl well. This also means that people who do not know Perl enough, or at all, get an impression that Perl is a mess, a language without any style, a write-only language. > The lack of "one true way" to do everything means that perl is the > programming language equivalent of "Standards are wonderful, because > there are so many to choose from". As with any other language, it is good to use the right tool (the right language construct) for the job. There are just more tools available. =Anton. -- May the tuna salad be with you. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message