From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Feb 8 12:25:34 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA25580 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Mon, 8 Feb 1999 12:25:34 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from alpha.comkey.com.au (alpha.comkey.com.au [203.9.152.215]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id MAA25547 for ; Mon, 8 Feb 1999 12:25:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from gjb@comkey.com.au) Received: (qmail 13190 invoked by uid 1001); 8 Feb 1999 18:03:30 -0000 Message-ID: <19990208180330.13189.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au> X-Posted-By: GBA-Post 1.04 06-Feb-1999 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 5A91 6942 8CEA 9DAB B95B C249 1CE1 493B 2B5A CE30 Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 04:03:30 +1000 From: Greg Black To: Patrick Seal Cc: root@isis.dynip.com, ben@scientia.demon.co.uk, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Help About Shell Script References: In-reply-to: of Sun, 07 Feb 1999 20:28:58 EST Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > Don't worry about perl. I learned it at 14 and had it pretty well > mastered (meaning I could Obfuscate my code for dem contests) as I turned > 16. I also learned C about that time and now (being sixteen) am learning > C++. Perl is *really* easy to learn. And when you grow up, you'll realize that neither perl or C++ is worth learning. These languages are both absurd examples of how not to invent a programming language. > Go to www.oreilly.com and get 'Learning Perl', 'Programming Perl', and if > you're rich get the 'Perl Cookbook' too. There's also a really nifty > Pocket Reference. You'll go blind if you do this -- of all currently popular langauges, perl is the one most calculated to induce visual dizziness. The real answer is to use real languages with clean and elegant syntax and sufficient simplicity to be easy to read -- the write-only nature of both perl and C++ means that, even when people get something working, it's almost impossible for the author (let alone anybody else) to make changes later without breaking everything. The obvious examples of languages that are worth learning are C and Python (and probably lisp). -- Greg Black To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message