> If there is one language I love unequivocally, it is Perl. > I like the TIMTOWTDI (tim tow tidi). > I have applied it to solve the most difficult problems easily.
I don't deny Perl is useful. Larry Wall is considered to be a genius for a number of reasons -- inventing a superior scripting language to csh or Bourne scripts is (IMHO) the least of his achievements. I *do* claim that Perl is unnecessarily syntactically grotesque -- in all the dictionary senses of the word. If IBM had been wise enough to make REXX freely available at the time Perl was getting started, there were a number of people that really wanted to make REXX widespread. Same thing with NetREXX -- IMHO, it's a vastly superior language to Java -- but IBM wouldn't let it fly free at the time it would have made a difference. Thus we're stuck with Java, a language that propagates the worst features of C *and* C++, and fixes few to none of the flaws of either. Another thing to have to beat out of the new CS grads when they get to the Real World and have to learn how to write maintainable code. I'd really like to find out who thought teaching Scheme as the only real programming language in many of the local CS curricula was a good idea... (my, I am getting cranky in my old age...bad morning, I guess. We're out of coffee. grr.) PHP and Python are somewhat better, but REXX is far cleaner and far easier to understand at a glance (and teach to normal mortals with real jobs other than computing) than any of the other three, IMHO. I always considered the System Product Interpreter Users Guide one of the best self-teaching manuals ever written -- *any* random yo-yo can learn enough REXX to be useful from that book. Too late now, but if only things had been different.... -- db
