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Could you elaborate on point 2 there? I think that's an interesting point. I think it fits with a theme I've been mulling over regarding more people being tool

Could you elaborate on point 2 there? I think that's an interesting point. I think it fits with a theme I've been mulling over regarding more people being tool users than tool builders.

singingfish 8y ago
Most decent computer languages are heavily inspired by theoretical linguistics. So education tends towards that. Perl is inspired by practical linguistics. It's a total mess like English and amazingly expressive like English. This doesn't fit well with standard computing paradigms, but it does make perl a decent language for people from non-standard backgrounds.
- lizmat 8y ago
  > perl a decent language for people from non-standard backgrounds I would argue "for any background". Why would you have to think like a computer to be able to program? Don't we have computers to do that?
  - singingfish 8y ago
    A lot of people from "standard backgrounds" have the theoretical linguistics approach baked in to their literacy. Perl on the other hand has a much easier time adapting to varying thinking styles. Here's a comment I made about a former colleague's code earlier today: > one thing people like about perl is it can shoehorn into pretty much any mental model. [ colleague ]'s model is quite solid but also pretty mental There's something to be said for enforcing a certain kind of mental model. Java and C# do a terrible job of this. Python does a reasonable job. Ruby is just perl done differently - seems to make the "mental" part a bit easier. Personally aside from perl the programming I've most enjoyed is arduino flavoured C, but that's just for fun. I do perl for fun and profit.
DougWebb 8y ago
One example I can think of is this: if you write perl using 'canonical' expressions, your code will often get compiled to optimized function calls. But if you use non-canonical expressions to perform the same operation, the compiled code won't be optimized and will run a lot slower. An example would be using a map expression instead of a for loop. The map expression will typically run faster, even though its body is pretty much the same as the for loop's body.
- lizmat 8y ago
  FWIW, in Perl 6 there is no real difference between a `map` and a `for` loop: in the case of the `for` loop, the final value of each iteration is simply discarded.
- rurban 8y ago
  No. map should be much slower than a for loop, because map has to cons the result list, while the for loop only does it for side effects, but ignores all the return values. If map is faster, then there's some thing wrong with the loop optimizer or loop run-time overhead. In cperl there are many loop optimizations which are not in perl5. I'm pretty sure "for" is faster than "map" there.

Could you elaborate on point 2 there? I think that's an interesting point. I think it fits with a theme I've been mulling over regarding more people being tool users than tool builders.

singingfish 8y ago

Most decent computer languages are heavily inspired by theoretical linguistics. So education tends towards that. Perl is inspired by practical linguistics. It's a total mess like English and amazingly expressive like English. This doesn't fit well with standard computing paradigms, but it does make perl a decent language for people from non-standard backgrounds.

lizmat 8y ago
> perl a decent language for people from non-standard backgrounds I would argue "for any background". Why would you have to think like a computer to be able to program? Don't we have computers to do that?
- singingfish 8y ago
  A lot of people from "standard backgrounds" have the theoretical linguistics approach baked in to their literacy. Perl on the other hand has a much easier time adapting to varying thinking styles. Here's a comment I made about a former colleague's code earlier today: > one thing people like about perl is it can shoehorn into pretty much any mental model. [ colleague ]'s model is quite solid but also pretty mental There's something to be said for enforcing a certain kind of mental model. Java and C# do a terrible job of this. Python does a reasonable job. Ruby is just perl done differently - seems to make the "mental" part a bit easier. Personally aside from perl the programming I've most enjoyed is arduino flavoured C, but that's just for fun. I do perl for fun and profit.

DougWebb 8y ago

One example I can think of is this: if you write perl using 'canonical' expressions, your code will often get compiled to optimized function calls. But if you use non-canonical expressions to perform the same operation, the compiled code won't be optimized and will run a lot slower. An example would be using a map expression instead of a for loop. The map expression will typically run faster, even though its body is pretty much the same as the for loop's body.

lizmat 8y ago
FWIW, in Perl 6 there is no real difference between a `map` and a `for` loop: in the case of the `for` loop, the final value of each iteration is simply discarded.
rurban 8y ago
No. map should be much slower than a for loop, because map has to cons the result list, while the for loop only does it for side effects, but ignores all the return values. If map is faster, then there's some thing wrong with the loop optimizer or loop run-time overhead. In cperl there are many loop optimizations which are not in perl5. I'm pretty sure "for" is faster than "map" there.