12/18 Happy 25th birthday Perl, and FUCK YOU Larry Wall for fucking up
the computer science formalism that sets back compilers development
back for at least a decade:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/18/print-happy-25th-birthday-perl
\_ I tried to learn Perl but was scared away by it. Maybe scripting
lanauages have to be like that in order to work well?
\_ I tried to learn Perl but was scared away by its incoherience.
\_ I tried to learn Perl but was scared away by its incoherence.
Maybe scripting languages have to be like that in order to work
well? I don't know other scripting languages.
\_ We laugh at Perl today and say it is the new COBOL, but to give
credit, Perl came out at a time when awk/sed were the ways of
doing things. People didn't know any better, and programming
languages/compilers/parsers were not as formalized as it is
now today.
Try Python, it is a very elegant language that
came out as a result of a lot of the earlier trial and error
and undos a lot of the mistakes that earlier folks made.
Python is VERY consistent (syntax, usage, etc) and very
readable, so that 10000 developers can read and develop
each other's code. Computers evolve. So do languages.
\_ Part of this is just image. People hate perl now. People
loved perl before. Python is cool now. Next it will be
ruby or something else. All of these languages, whether
FORTRAN, COBOL, C++, Java or Python do basically the same
shit to an order of magnitude.
\_ you are not a computer science major. Yes you are correct
that all modern languages all perform the same computations
and have the same power in the Chomsky Hierachy. They
will however provide different features, most of them are
time savings or productivity boosts. Features such as
static typing and static analysis (bane of old dynamic
languages) detects type errors BEFORE the program even
runs (sorry Perl). Dynamic languages saves people time
by not requiring a long dance (e.g. verbose Java/C
declarations) so programmers can focus on coding instead
of syntax. New languages have both features of dynamic
and strong/static typing (e.g. Go, Scala) which allow
programmers to code like dynamic languages AND allow
the compilers to perform semantic analysis. Sorry again
Perl (it is not even a language that can be described in
a standard AST). Look, even old Java itself was a big
thing as programmers no longer need to spend so much
time worrying about memory management and debugging
and monitoring stack trace and heap. Java provides
faster time-to-market over C, just as Go/Scala/etc
will provide faster time-to-market over Java. Don't
discount future programming languages, runtime, and
compilers. There will always be something better
(sorry, Ruby is NOT better) and meta-productivity will
always increase with further language research.
BTW you are probably wondering how much productivity
a higher level language provides. Read the Mythical
Man-Month. It is provide concrete numbers. Read it.
-CS, thesis in programming languages
\_ I have a MS in CS from UCLA and I stand by my statement.
Most of what you say is true, but it doesn't
contradict anything I said. What language is
"better" depends on a lot of variables. Note
specifically that I am not claiming that FORTRAN, Perl,
Java, and C++ are equivalent. Of course not. However,
for solving certain classes of problems they certainly
are. Further, sometimes some of the "advantages" aren't.
There is definitely some element of a beauty contest
when it comes to the "new, improved" language du
jour. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks
like a nail. I see this with freshouts all the time.
\_ what is your thesis? What is UCLA's ranking?
\_ Why don't you ask me how big my penis is?
\_ Since you brought it up...
\_ Are you hitting on me?
\_ It depends on what your answer is.
\_ compare scripting to scripting, and static typed
compiled languages to static typed compiled
languages. Any other comparison is apple & orange.
Perl is a scripting language that can be easily
replaced by any modern scripting language just as
FORTRAN can be replaced by any C/C++ variants today.
How many companies today still actively develop
their products using COBAL?
\_ What is your claim here? |
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