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If you never worked in perl, you might think people are being a bit mean and want to take a contrarian position. It really was that bad. You'd come back from lu

If you never worked in perl, you might think people are being a bit mean and want to take a contrarian position. It really was that bad. You'd come back from lunch and need to pull out a notepad and start diagramming to understand the code you are written an hour earlier. The only language I've ever seen, outside of joke languages like brainfuck, where the typical program was less readable is APL.

kbenson 8y ago
> You'd come back from lunch and need to pull out a notepad and start diagramming to understand the code you are written an hour earlier. I think this says more about your skill level in programming Perl or programming in general at that time than it does about Perl. Or at least the influences that you learned Perl from. It's possible to write nearly unreadable code in any language. It's easier to do so in Perl, since it's pretty freeform. It's also not that hard to write very clear code. But you're complaining about your own code. I think perhaps blaming the tool at that point is looking in the wrong place.
- bradleyjg 8y ago
  I was certainly not a good programmer back then. But when I started writing java (1.1!) instead my bad code was a lot less bad. While I’m sure it’s possible to write maintainable perl I’ve never heard anyone say “we had 10,000 lines of perl and it was a joy to work with.” Ever.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    The Java version puts the prior comment in perspective. I agree even most Perl programmers would not want to work on a codebase from this Era. The problem is that Perl was the de-facto web programming language at the time, and large swaths of the internet was written by Perl neophytes and programming amateurs. The code generated by this population was necessarily problematic. By the same token, PHP codebase of the early 2000's were a horrible mess. There is a downside to being among the popular and accessible languages of a period. It takes a while for the general community skill level to increase and best practices to trickle down to new people. Javascript of a few years ago wasn't all that different, except for a large amount of experienced programmers from other languages also being involved because of its privileged place as the language of web browsers. These days, I wouldn't imagine most codebasse of 10k lines in Perl being noticeably worse than in Python or Ruby.

kbenson 8y ago

> You'd come back from lunch and need to pull out a notepad and start diagramming to understand the code you are written an hour earlier. I think this says more about your skill level in programming Perl or programming in general at that time than it does about Perl. Or at least the influences that you learned Perl from. It's possible to write nearly unreadable code in any language. It's easier to do so in Perl, since it's pretty freeform. It's also not that hard to write very clear code. But you're complaining about your own code. I think perhaps blaming the tool at that point is looking in the wrong place.

bradleyjg 8y ago
I was certainly not a good programmer back then. But when I started writing java (1.1!) instead my bad code was a lot less bad. While I’m sure it’s possible to write maintainable perl I’ve never heard anyone say “we had 10,000 lines of perl and it was a joy to work with.” Ever.
- kbenson 8y ago
  The Java version puts the prior comment in perspective. I agree even most Perl programmers would not want to work on a codebase from this Era. The problem is that Perl was the de-facto web programming language at the time, and large swaths of the internet was written by Perl neophytes and programming amateurs. The code generated by this population was necessarily problematic. By the same token, PHP codebase of the early 2000's were a horrible mess. There is a downside to being among the popular and accessible languages of a period. It takes a while for the general community skill level to increase and best practices to trickle down to new people. Javascript of a few years ago wasn't all that different, except for a large amount of experienced programmers from other languages also being involved because of its privileged place as the language of web browsers. These days, I wouldn't imagine most codebasse of 10k lines in Perl being noticeably worse than in Python or Ruby.