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"The only people that can't read their own Perl after 6 months are the people that don't really know Perl." again replace "perl" with "APL" or "BrainFuck" (or

"The only people that can't read their own Perl after 6 months are the people that don't really know Perl." again replace "perl" with "APL" or "BrainFuck" (or any language with baroque syntax) and the above sentence is as (in)valid. This comes close to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. If you really knew perl you would have no problems with reading it. Sure, but that applies to anything, no matter how convoluted. It doesn't matter whether you think their claims are "bogus" or not, or whether they meet your standards of "really" knowing perl. Some people find that they can read their own code in other languages easier than their own code in perl after 6 months. You might think this "bogus", that doesn't matter. For them, that is a reality they have to deal with. And many deal with it by shifting to other languages and leaving perl to its aficionados. This is as it should be. Everyone should use the language they like and not use languages they dislike (irrespective of my or your stances on what they should like or whether their claimed reasons for dislike is "bogus"). Nobody is compelling you to abandon perl. So what's your problem with them not using perl? A language is a UI for programmers. Some people find some UIs hard. Telling them that their discomfort is "bogus" is not very useful. I use a lot of Haskell. Many people say they find its type system, monads etc "too hard". That isn't a "bogus claim". And "If they really knew Haskell they wouldn't find it hard" (where I define the "really knew") is a useless statement. I use Haskell, they don't. Everyone is happy. Live and let live. There are enough languages for all of us.

staunch 17y ago
Perl requires that you learn a bit before you can be comfortable reading/writing it naturally. Like Japanese Katakana characters or the Cyrillic alphabet, a little investment goes a very long way. It's not nearly as alien as it appears at first glance. Some people think Perl is a good deal more expressive and powerful for them. A whole lot more people would if they managed to get past their initial reaction. Python probably owes most of its success to its simplistic syntax. That is definitely a feature when you're learning. When you're going to spend years with a tool though it's often worth investing some time into new concepts. More people should probably learn Haskell if they want to be better programmers. I think more should learn Perl too.
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "Perl requires that you learn a bit before you can be comfortable reading/writing it naturally. Like Japanese Katakana characters or the Cyrillic alphabet, a little investment goes a very long way. It's not nearly as alien as it appears at first glance." This is, no doubt, true. But if people find that for a lesser investment (in say Python or Ruby) they can get all the (or almost all the) benefits of learning perl, it is natural they prefer those languages. If a hypothetical English speaker were to be given the choice of learning French or Japanese and if he could get his work done with either language equally well (this is where programming languages differ from spoken languages) why is it a problem that someone chooses to learn French (an English speaker could be fluent in french in year or so, Japanese would take years) instead of Japanese? A Chinese speaker might prefer to learn Japanese vs French and that's fine too. Focussing on perl specifically, unless I am maintaining a legacy codebase or I have a situation where libraries I need exist only in perl (and not, say in Python) why should I learn perl in preference to (say) Python? I can imagine making a case for learning Haskell in preference to Python (or vice versa!) but perl Python and Ruby are largely equivalent in practice and at least to some people Python is easier to read than perl. "Some people think Perl is a good deal more expressive and powerful for them. A whole lot more people would if they managed to get past their initial reaction." I agree. The counterpoint is that there are equally powerful and expressive languages where I don't need to get past the initial reaction. To some people aesthetics matter. And aesthetics is subjective.
  - staunch 17y ago
    I don't really disagree that Ruby/Perl/Python are roughly in the same league of power. I do think some people may find that Perl is a good deal more productive/expressive/powerful for them. The Moose object system, CPAN, Catalyst, DBIx::Class. Perl has some amazingly awesome stuff going for it now and I think it's a shame that many people never discover that because of the stigma surrounding Perl's syntax. It's tiresome seeing the same old superficial argument about Perl's sigils. I'd like to see more discussion about how much more powerful and advanced Perl's Moose object system is than Python's :-)
    - 17y ago

staunch 17y ago

Perl requires that you learn a bit before you can be comfortable reading/writing it naturally. Like Japanese Katakana characters or the Cyrillic alphabet, a little investment goes a very long way. It's not nearly as alien as it appears at first glance. Some people think Perl is a good deal more expressive and powerful for them. A whole lot more people would if they managed to get past their initial reaction. Python probably owes most of its success to its simplistic syntax. That is definitely a feature when you're learning. When you're going to spend years with a tool though it's often worth investing some time into new concepts. More people should probably learn Haskell if they want to be better programmers. I think more should learn Perl too.

plinkplonk 17y ago
"Perl requires that you learn a bit before you can be comfortable reading/writing it naturally. Like Japanese Katakana characters or the Cyrillic alphabet, a little investment goes a very long way. It's not nearly as alien as it appears at first glance." This is, no doubt, true. But if people find that for a lesser investment (in say Python or Ruby) they can get all the (or almost all the) benefits of learning perl, it is natural they prefer those languages. If a hypothetical English speaker were to be given the choice of learning French or Japanese and if he could get his work done with either language equally well (this is where programming languages differ from spoken languages) why is it a problem that someone chooses to learn French (an English speaker could be fluent in french in year or so, Japanese would take years) instead of Japanese? A Chinese speaker might prefer to learn Japanese vs French and that's fine too. Focussing on perl specifically, unless I am maintaining a legacy codebase or I have a situation where libraries I need exist only in perl (and not, say in Python) why should I learn perl in preference to (say) Python? I can imagine making a case for learning Haskell in preference to Python (or vice versa!) but perl Python and Ruby are largely equivalent in practice and at least to some people Python is easier to read than perl. "Some people think Perl is a good deal more expressive and powerful for them. A whole lot more people would if they managed to get past their initial reaction." I agree. The counterpoint is that there are equally powerful and expressive languages where I don't need to get past the initial reaction. To some people aesthetics matter. And aesthetics is subjective.
- staunch 17y ago
  I don't really disagree that Ruby/Perl/Python are roughly in the same league of power. I do think some people may find that Perl is a good deal more productive/expressive/powerful for them. The Moose object system, CPAN, Catalyst, DBIx::Class. Perl has some amazingly awesome stuff going for it now and I think it's a shame that many people never discover that because of the stigma surrounding Perl's syntax. It's tiresome seeing the same old superficial argument about Perl's sigils. I'd like to see more discussion about how much more powerful and advanced Perl's Moose object system is than Python's :-)
  - 17y ago