On Aug 5, 2006, at 3:23 PM, Ronald J Kimball wrote:
On Sat, Aug 05, 2006 at 02:59:38PM -0400, David Livesay wrote:
On Aug 5, 2006, at 1:42 PM, Matthew Fischer wrote:
This could be done in any language, not just PERL. I (like
Ronald :) happen to like PERL and find that it does what I need it
to do. Just take a look at some of the solutions he has posted to
this list and you can see how powerful it is. For those who want
you something else feel free - the question of which language to
use is one without one right answer.
I totally disagree. If you define your requirements in advance,
there's always a best language for a given purpose. Since my
requirements always include maintainability, that precludes Perl.
Perl provides more flexibility than many other languages - it gives
you
enough rope to hang yourself. On the one hand, this gives the
programmer a
lot of power. On the other hand, it invites people to spread FUD
about
Perl code being hard to maintain. Poorly-written Perl code can be
hard to
maintain, just as in any language. A good programmer can write
Perl code
that is easily-maintainable.
By that metric, there are no good programmers who write Perl. I have
yet to see two Perl coders agree on what Perl is well-written and
what Perl is badly written. Every time you hire a consultant to
maintain a Perl script they end up rewriting the whole damn thing
because "the last guy didn't know what he was doing." This is the
case even when "the last guy" was the very same guy six months ago.
Giving programmers enough rope to hang themselves isn't exactly the
kind of thing you want in a programming language, and besides, they
don't just hang themselves. They mainly hang the people who have to
use the software and pay for it to be maintained. This isn't FUD.
This is experience. Keep it up, though. I find the zealotry of Perl
fanatics very amusing.
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