4 ms·

What is your take on Perl and Ruby? They seem to be the two languages where the communities themselves talk the most about poetry and elegance.

sph 4y ago
Perl and Ruby are very expressive. Python on the other hand feels like a scripting language designed by a 1990s corporate Java developer. /unpopular-hot-take
- MrLeap 4y ago
  I mostly agree with this. I'll come to python's defense though. Python is a gorgeous language wearing an ugly hat. The hat has __multiple out of place brims__, all of which are about two underscores wide.
  - sph 4y ago
    It's not a hat, it's a snake that swallowed a Java engineer :)
    - tuatoru 4y ago
      The name came from the author's love of Monty Python's Flying Circus, so perhaps it's an experiment in low-key absurdist humor or surrealist art. Like chindōgu[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu
colanderman 4y ago
Perl (5) I find quite complex, the opposite of C and Prolog. I suppose the elegance some find comes from packing lots of behavior into very few characters of code. When I want to code as art though, I prefer simpler, less "magical" tools. I've never used Ruby but from what I've seen I understand it to be similar to Perl in that regard.
- mikem170 4y ago
  I agree that perl can be complex, its feature list is longer than C. Trying to be artistic in it, to me, means trying to make it so my code reads as much like pseudo-code as is reasonably possible. At its best the users are able to read the business logic portions and understand what is going on. Of course good naming and abstractions are of key importance, and comments and inline documentation are important finishing touches, which so many programmers don't seem to have the time for. It doesn't hurt that Larry Wall, the designer of perl, was a linguist. Perl was meant to be flexible and expressive. And everyone knows that there's nothing worse to read than obfuscated perl. Perhaps some think that is artistic in a different way, to make the shortest and most unreadable program possible. Not my thing, personally.

sph 4y ago

Perl and Ruby are very expressive. Python on the other hand feels like a scripting language designed by a 1990s corporate Java developer. /unpopular-hot-take

MrLeap 4y ago
I mostly agree with this. I'll come to python's defense though. Python is a gorgeous language wearing an ugly hat. The hat has __multiple out of place brims__, all of which are about two underscores wide.
- sph 4y ago
  It's not a hat, it's a snake that swallowed a Java engineer :)
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    The name came from the author's love of Monty Python's Flying Circus, so perhaps it's an experiment in low-key absurdist humor or surrealist art. Like chindōgu[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu

colanderman 4y ago

Perl (5) I find quite complex, the opposite of C and Prolog. I suppose the elegance some find comes from packing lots of behavior into very few characters of code. When I want to code as art though, I prefer simpler, less "magical" tools. I've never used Ruby but from what I've seen I understand it to be similar to Perl in that regard.

mikem170 4y ago
I agree that perl can be complex, its feature list is longer than C. Trying to be artistic in it, to me, means trying to make it so my code reads as much like pseudo-code as is reasonably possible. At its best the users are able to read the business logic portions and understand what is going on. Of course good naming and abstractions are of key importance, and comments and inline documentation are important finishing touches, which so many programmers don't seem to have the time for. It doesn't hurt that Larry Wall, the designer of perl, was a linguist. Perl was meant to be flexible and expressive. And everyone knows that there's nothing worse to read than obfuscated perl. Perhaps some think that is artistic in a different way, to make the shortest and most unreadable program possible. Not my thing, personally.