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Every programmer who loves Perl should ask him/herself: Is this a case of Stockholm Syndrome? I think for me it was. The jobs kept coming, stuff kept getting d

by natch 13y ago

Every programmer who loves Perl should ask him/herself: Is this a case of Stockholm Syndrome? I think for me it was. The jobs kept coming, stuff kept getting done, I enjoyed myself, I'm proud of most of the code I wrote, and yet, it never felt completely right. Probably because Perl has always been more of a petri dish for idioms than an organized home for them.

roeme 13y ago
Stockholm Syndrome implies that Perl is bad, no? I disagree. Just as it allows you to write horrible stuff, you can just as well get your shit together and do it maintainable, robust and nice to the eye :) And as the author states, you (almost) always have an choice to run other languages, where perl runs. Not really a hostage situation, methinks. Edit: Not that I particularly like Perl, but neither do I hate it. I think it's somewhat bad reputation stems more from the fact, as described above, that it forces you less to do things nicely and is very accessible to the, let's say, less experiences programmers - so a lot of quickly cobbled together stuff flies around.
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > it allows you to write horrible stuff, you can just as well get your shit together and do it maintainable Many years of programming practice and SE theory have taught some of us that discipline is not the main concern of most programmers and the higher a level you require of it, the more you will be disappointed. Which means that you tend to get more maintainable results from languages which either require very little discipline to produce good code or those that strictly enforce discipline (e.g. Go). Sadly, even the code on CPAN (which was built to withstand some scrutiny apparently, or why else would anyone release it to the public) is often so badly written that I wouldn't want to debug or maintain it. > And as the author states, you (almost) always have an choice to run other languages, where perl runs. Not really a hostage situation, methinks. In practice you're more likely to find old, hard to maintain Perl code bases that noone is able or wants to rewrite in another language, if you get hired to program in Perl. If there was a realistic choice to use another language, it was likely made already years ago.
  - AdrianRossouw 13y ago
    I fell off my chair when I installed R for the first time, and I discovered that I needed a FORTRAN interpreter. Apparently the math libraries written in fortran back in the day have become such a foundational part of analytics, that nobody really wants to re-implement them.
    - baldfat 13y ago
      FORTRAN is an amazing language for some very specific jobs and is still a great tool for a specific job. It's fast does scientific and numerical calculations incredibly fast. I haven't touched Fortran in 20 years though :) I loved me Pascal except the semi-colon key broke on my keyboards.
    - alephnil 13y ago
      That is not really the reason. The reason is mainly BLAS, that implements some of the most commonly used linear algebra operations (matrix multiplication, matrix solvers, singular value decompositions etc). This is implemented in optimized versions for almost every CPU available. BLAS is written in FORTRAN, but it is not true that it has not been reimplemented. In fact CPU vendors frequently reimplement it tailor made for their CPU. On the other hand, the API is not something that is subject to change. A lot of software expect this to be stable, like Matlab, R, Octave, Numpy, and a lot of others.
    - steveklabnik 13y ago
      My vague understanding is that Fortran can actually be faster than C in certain numerical calculations because the language doesn't make the same kinds of guarantees. And therefore, Fortran will live forever.
      - chromatic 13y ago
        Fortran disallows pointer aliasing and it has some language intrinsics which operate on arrays as a whole, so the compiler can emit processor-specific SIMD instructions. I'm sure that a very clever programmer could use restrict and inline assembly in C to get similar benefits, but you know as well as I do that having the language make these guarantees for you is helpful.
mattfenwick 13y ago
I think you made an interesting point, but IMHO it should be generalized: > Every programmer who loves Perl should ask him/herself I think this should read "Every programmer who loves any technology should ask him/herself [...]". Asking this question may be a great way to learn more deeply about the technology. I don't think that Perl is special in this regard. > Is this a case of Stockholm Syndrome? Not if the programmer acknowledges there's problems with Perl, but loves it anyway; not if the programmer has experience with other technologies that have different strengths and weaknesses.
sliverstorm 13y ago
The jobs kept coming, stuff kept getting done, I enjoyed myself, I'm proud of most of the code I wrote Please excuse me for being an idiot, but I don't see the problem.
- ionforce 13y ago
  It's a perception problem. Just because something is locally good doesn't mean there isn't a more optimal good elsewhere.
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    But thinking like that creates what I'll call the Walter Mitty Problem: making a great living, enjoying a loving family, great health, etc., but being unable to take satisfaction from any of that because you're too busy dreaming of being a larger-than-life figure. The better your circumstances get, the more dreaming of even better ones becomes a game of diminishing returns. (For those of you who only know Walter Mitty from the Ben Stiller movie, here's the original short story: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1939/03/18/390318fi_fiction_thurber?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1939/03/18/390318fi_fiction...)
- untog 13y ago
  Short term-ism vs. Long term-ism.
  - ttflee 13y ago
    'But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.'
pekk 13y ago
Stockholm syndrome isn't the same as being in a stable, mutually beneficial marriage to someone who's not completely compatible with you.
- tommu 13y ago
  Is post industrial work ever completely compatible with the essential human condition?

by natch 13y ago

roeme 13y ago

Stockholm Syndrome implies that Perl is bad, no? I disagree. Just as it allows you to write horrible stuff, you can just as well get your shit together and do it maintainable, robust and nice to the eye :) And as the author states, you (almost) always have an choice to run other languages, where perl runs. Not really a hostage situation, methinks. Edit: Not that I particularly like Perl, but neither do I hate it. I think it's somewhat bad reputation stems more from the fact, as described above, that it forces you less to do things nicely and is very accessible to the, let's say, less experiences programmers - so a lot of quickly cobbled together stuff flies around.

lazyjones 13y ago
> it allows you to write horrible stuff, you can just as well get your shit together and do it maintainable Many years of programming practice and SE theory have taught some of us that discipline is not the main concern of most programmers and the higher a level you require of it, the more you will be disappointed. Which means that you tend to get more maintainable results from languages which either require very little discipline to produce good code or those that strictly enforce discipline (e.g. Go). Sadly, even the code on CPAN (which was built to withstand some scrutiny apparently, or why else would anyone release it to the public) is often so badly written that I wouldn't want to debug or maintain it. > And as the author states, you (almost) always have an choice to run other languages, where perl runs. Not really a hostage situation, methinks. In practice you're more likely to find old, hard to maintain Perl code bases that noone is able or wants to rewrite in another language, if you get hired to program in Perl. If there was a realistic choice to use another language, it was likely made already years ago.
- AdrianRossouw 13y ago
  I fell off my chair when I installed R for the first time, and I discovered that I needed a FORTRAN interpreter. Apparently the math libraries written in fortran back in the day have become such a foundational part of analytics, that nobody really wants to re-implement them.
  - baldfat 13y ago
    FORTRAN is an amazing language for some very specific jobs and is still a great tool for a specific job. It's fast does scientific and numerical calculations incredibly fast. I haven't touched Fortran in 20 years though :) I loved me Pascal except the semi-colon key broke on my keyboards.
  - alephnil 13y ago
    That is not really the reason. The reason is mainly BLAS, that implements some of the most commonly used linear algebra operations (matrix multiplication, matrix solvers, singular value decompositions etc). This is implemented in optimized versions for almost every CPU available. BLAS is written in FORTRAN, but it is not true that it has not been reimplemented. In fact CPU vendors frequently reimplement it tailor made for their CPU. On the other hand, the API is not something that is subject to change. A lot of software expect this to be stable, like Matlab, R, Octave, Numpy, and a lot of others.
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    My vague understanding is that Fortran can actually be faster than C in certain numerical calculations because the language doesn't make the same kinds of guarantees. And therefore, Fortran will live forever.
    - chromatic 13y ago
      Fortran disallows pointer aliasing and it has some language intrinsics which operate on arrays as a whole, so the compiler can emit processor-specific SIMD instructions. I'm sure that a very clever programmer could use restrict and inline assembly in C to get similar benefits, but you know as well as I do that having the language make these guarantees for you is helpful.

mattfenwick 13y ago

I think you made an interesting point, but IMHO it should be generalized: > Every programmer who loves Perl should ask him/herself I think this should read "Every programmer who loves any technology should ask him/herself [...]". Asking this question may be a great way to learn more deeply about the technology. I don't think that Perl is special in this regard. > Is this a case of Stockholm Syndrome? Not if the programmer acknowledges there's problems with Perl, but loves it anyway; not if the programmer has experience with other technologies that have different strengths and weaknesses.

sliverstorm 13y ago

The jobs kept coming, stuff kept getting done, I enjoyed myself, I'm proud of most of the code I wrote Please excuse me for being an idiot, but I don't see the problem.

ionforce 13y ago
It's a perception problem. Just because something is locally good doesn't mean there isn't a more optimal good elsewhere.
- smacktoward 13y ago
  But thinking like that creates what I'll call the Walter Mitty Problem: making a great living, enjoying a loving family, great health, etc., but being unable to take satisfaction from any of that because you're too busy dreaming of being a larger-than-life figure. The better your circumstances get, the more dreaming of even better ones becomes a game of diminishing returns. (For those of you who only know Walter Mitty from the Ben Stiller movie, here's the original short story: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1939/03/18/390318fi_fiction_thurber?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1939/03/18/390318fi_fiction...)
untog 13y ago
Short term-ism vs. Long term-ism.
- ttflee 13y ago
  'But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.'

pekk 13y ago

Stockholm syndrome isn't the same as being in a stable, mutually beneficial marriage to someone who's not completely compatible with you.

tommu 13y ago
Is post industrial work ever completely compatible with the essential human condition?