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I've achieved a high level of expertise in Perl. Even though I can, I won't write complex Perl one liners; instead, I will write tested, documented utilities w
by rectang 7y ago
I've achieved a high level of expertise in Perl. Even though I can, I won't write complex Perl one liners; instead, I will write tested, documented utilities which someone who has not achieved such a level of mastery has a shot at grokking, maintaining and debugging.
Even better if I can write such utilities in a more modern programming language like Go or Rust, if the organization has personnel with expertise in such languages.
- Chris2048 7y agoWhat if the task is one-off? would you still care to write a proper utility? As an example, you have some data you need to fix as input to some program. you incrementally try to fix it with perl: 1) run program with data, observe errors, infer what needs fixing -> 2) write perl to fix data, modify data -> 3) repeat from (1) until no errors You have no expectation you'll ever need to fix data corrupted in the same way ever again.
- 0xff00ffee 7y agorectang: "Awk, like shell, is a fraught programming environment, full of silent failure and hidden gotchas. Even for one-liners..." Also rectang: "Even better if I can write such utilities in a more modern programming language like Go or Rust..." Thank you for demonstrating how Linux decays due to lack of experience and NIH syndrome.