3 ms·

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

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.