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Subject: Re: Adduser program in C
To: michaelv@HeadCandy.com (Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com)
Date: Sun, 26 May 1996 01:34:15 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: dima@freebsd.org, joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de, lithium@cia-g.com,
        freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199605260749.AAA14805@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> from "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" at May 26, 96 00:49:25 am
From: dima@freebsd.org (Dima Ruban)
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Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com writes:
> 
> 
> >> Perl is certainly one of the fastest scripting languages.
> 
> >fastest scripting language != fastest programming language.
> >I don't think perl script is going to be faster when the same C program.
> 
> You're comparing Apples to Oranges.  Perl is a fast interpretted
> scripting language.  C is a compiled language.  They are different
> things.  Compiled C and scripting-based languages are designed to
> solve two completely different problems.

Do you want me to compare sh+sed+awk and perl? I bet, first three
is going to be faster and the same script which uses sh+sed+awk
will requre less memory than the same script on perl.

But I agree, there're whole bunch of things, that can be written
on perl easier than on sh+sed+etc.

> If you aren't interested in the rest of my long dissertation, please
> move on to the next message now....

It depends on what do you want to tell...

> How is C faster when you want to throw something together in two
> minutes to do some complex automated task?  In many cases it can be
> many times slower, because it will take so much longer to write it,
> compile it, debug it, and get it fully functional.

what about `make'?

> I generally see this attitude the most in "beginners" or theorists who
> haven't actually had to design and plan large projects, then make all
> the details work, on a repeated basis.  People who haven't been three

Now I have to decide who I am - "beginner" or theorist ...

> months into a project, with lots of issues pending investigation, and
> a product half written, who have to make literal trade-offs between
> what they will be able to finish writing, and what they will have to
> postpone, or remove completely from the product.  There just isn't
> enough time in our lives to write all the code to fix all the problems
> that we'll want to solve.
> 
> Scripting is an enourmously important part of Unix system
> adminstration.  When I used to be one of several people running a
> large Unix site, if all our adminstration tools had been written in C,
> we'd have gotten nothing done.

I'm not speaking about all scripting languages. We had  a discussion
about perl scripts, I believe ...


> [ ... skipped ... ]

> If you don't like perl because it doesn't do something as well as
> another language used for the same purpose, then you have a valid
> concern.  But, if you don't like perl simply because it's not C, then
> you are completely missing the point...

I don't like perl because this is fat. I don't like perl because this is slow.

> Can you tell I had an English minor?  Somehow I seem to have no
> problem writing things that end up getting waaay too long...  :-)

Sorry, I'm an uneducated person.

> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Michael L. VanLoon                                 michaelv@HeadCandy.com
>         --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
>     NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
>         Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
>     NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
> 
>    Roll your own Internet access -- Seattle People's Internet cooperative.
>                   If you're in the Seattle area, ask me how.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 

-- dima