Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 21:57:42 +0000 From: Ben Smithurst <ben@scientia.demon.co.uk> To: Greg Black <gjb@comkey.com.au> Cc: Patrick Seal <patseal@hyperhost.net>, root@isis.dynip.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Help About Shell Script Message-ID: <19990208215742.A17821@scientia.demon.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <19990208180330.13189.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au> References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9902072023090.77528-100000@foobar.hyperhost.net> <19990208180330.13189.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au>
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Greg Black wrote: >> 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. At the risk of starting a language war, I personally like Perl. (I don't know much about C++, but I didn't like the look of a few bits I've seen.) >> 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 I personally find a lot of Perl code easy to read. It may not be the prettiest language ever, but I don't think it's too bad. That's not to say I can read and understand all Perl code, but a lot of the things I've come across haven't been too bad. > 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. For someone who isn't a Perl programmer, maybe. I have written scripts, then come back to them and though "why on earth did I do that", but that's mostly been because I didn't put comments in the code, which would have been equally true whatever language I had used. > The obvious examples of languages that are > worth learning are C and Python (and probably lisp). I agree about C, but but like C++, I haven't seen much Python. I think I'll just stick with Perl and C. (A friend of mine thinks Java is the best language around. hmm...) I suppose this is just one of those religious issues... -- Ben Smithurst ben@scientia.demon.co.uk send a blank message to ben+pgp@scientia.demon.co.uk for PGP key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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