On 2008-01-14 at 14:53 -0800, Michael G Schwern wrote: > Standardized automated installation? What's that? Maybe you get a link to a > .py file. Maybe you get a tarball and you have to copy the contents by hand. > Maybe you get a zip file. Maybe you get something that wants to use > autoconf, Windows users lose. Maybe the link is 404. Maybe it's got a > Makefile, hard coded with BSD or GNUisms! Maybe it's their "installer of the > week"! Is it an egg? No, it's 0install! No, wait, it's PyInstaller! Maybe > you get a link to another web page and you have to scrounge through that to > find the appropriate download link. Maybe your OS vendor has a package for > it, but lord knows what patches they've applied or how out of date their > version is. Maybe you just get an Apache directory listing and you have to > scroll through to find the latest version.
Actually sounds similar to the way Perl has been headed with multiple installers all bickering with each other and all thinking that it's enough for OS package management to have a manifest in the package manager's format, with no thought to integrating into version management. And then there's the threading issue, requiring parallel Perl installs. > And, of course, they're all going to have their own random versioning systems > so good luck figuring out which one is the latest version. It's probably the > newest one... but maybe that's an alpha! > > So throw your tantrum, put on your little backpack and run away from home! > You'll get halfway down the block before you come running back! CPAN will > still be here. Just because something is in CPAN that doesn't mean that it's fit for use. I hope I made it clear how much I dislike Python. My point isn't that Python is better. Heck, this is hates-software. My point is that Perl has lost its way and can no longer entice me back by not being as messed up as the others. I've already seen the Python side; as I say, I use it at work. I've also observed how much more there is in the way of quality-controlled modules that ship with Python, instead of whatever random crud floated stinkily to the top in the popularity context on CPAN. I used to think that documentation was where Perl shone. You called that out in particular. It's true that Perl's own documentation is excellent, but the core language only needs to be learnt once and sometimes be referred back to. Many of Perl's modules have excellent docs. These are the modules which are so common and basic that their equivalent is part of the Python install. If you're only ever writing to these modules then you're not really doing much that's not fairly routine monkey coding. I finally stopped grumbling about Python only ever having lists of methods and classes in a fairly raw format in pydoc and the Python programmers thinking that was enough when I saw which way Perl modules seem to be going. Crypt::OpenSSL::X509 is a "good" example here. It doesn't list half the methods or even the relevant constructors; yes, it lists that you can create an object directly from a file, that doesn't help if you have the x509 PEM in-memory already. I ended up having to read the XS source code to find out what methods were and weren't available and what the parameters were. With automated API interface lists, at least I'd know about: Crypt::OpenSSL::X509->new_from_string($pemdata) without having to delve through HOW NATIVE LANGUAGE CODE IS USED TO PROVIDE AN INTERPRETED LANGUAGE FEATURE! I shouldn't have needed to read about ALIAS: and auto-indexes into dispatch tables within Perl for the aliased names. So yes, Perl's documentation was excellent and I could figure all that out. But no, Crypt::OpenSSL::X509 is not alone here. But this wasn't the casual hacking I was looking for in a personal idle-time project. I shouldn't be swearing at the language which I'm voluntarily using. I accept it at work, they pay me in $$$ and part of that deal is that I work in the Chosen Languages and conform to The One True $Employer Style Guide for that language, etc. I'll quite happily work in Perl, if I'm paid to do so. But it's moved to needing to be paid to do it where before I'd do so for fun. -Phil
