On Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 09:12:30PM -0800, Randal L. Schwartz wrote: > > Only vaguely. I'm a bit embarassed by them, actually. I think my > original twistyness has devolved to Obfuperl, and *that* has > contributed to people thinking that Perl is really inherently > obfuscated, which undermines what *I* would like to see how Perl is > perceived in the marketplace. So it may have backfired. Maybe > Obfuperl would have been come about some other way, but I'm sure my > JAPHs were a contributing factor.
Frankly, I doubt that's true. There's a obfuscated C contest, but that doesn't make people think C is inherently obfuscated. That Perl has the name of being inherently obfuscated, has, IMO, other reasons. It's the design of Perl; it allows you to do things in many ways, with lots of special cases. That's a dual edged sword, it makes life of the experienced programmer with self-discipline easier, but it provides too much rope for most programmers. Perl makes it easy to write programs - both good *and* bad ones. I don't think Japhs and intentionally obfuscated Perl contributed more to the idea Perl is inherently obfuscated, then the scores of mediocry programmers who should never have used Perl in the first place. To make a (bad?) analogy, I don't think Ferrarri will get a reputation of being an unsafe car if a bunch of people intentionlly crash Ferrarri cars into brick walls - but it will get an (undeserved) bad reputation if a bunch of Sunday drivers crash with them. I've always said, and I keep on saying so, that Perl is not suited for most people calling themselves "programmer". > Having said that, I really enjoyed Abigail's presentation a few years > back at YAPC. Thanks. Abigail
