[ale] What to use

Joseph Knapka jknapka at earthlink.net
Wed Apr 23 10:30:50 EDT 2003


greg at turnstep.com writes:

> > Much as I dislike Java, it is without question a more appropriate tool
> > than Perl for building large-scale, maintainable systems. Furthermore,
> > you are more likely to find good Java progammers than good Perl
> > programmers (whatever that might mean). I'm not saying Perl is
> > unreliable, but I read the "perldoc perlreftut" page last night
> > in an attempt to clear up my confusion about Perl references, and
> > discovered that there are no less than *three* different syntaxes
> > for dereferencing a reference! And there are syntax variations like
> > that all over Perl, which means that you *will* have a tough time
> > reading other people's code.
> 
> Sorry, but if you do not understand references within Perl, you do not 
> know enough about the language to be supporting of it or to bash it.

I understand their semantics just fine; it's the syntax that trips me
up whenever I have to deal with Perl code.  Anyway, surely one doesn't
need complete understanding of every nuance of a tool in order to have
an informed opinion.

> The keyword here is "tool" - Perl is simply that. It can be used to 
> write beautiful, elegant, and well-maintaned code. It can be used 
> to write horribly inefficient line-noise-resembling dreck. I've seen 
> the former appear in some very large-scale systems which Perl handled 
> with no problems whatsoever. It's more a matter of the processes, the 
> standards, and the quality of the programmers than which language 
> you choose to use.

Surely you'll agree that some tools are more appropriate for a
particular job than others. You probably wouldn't want to write a Unix
kernel in Prolog; the language just doesn't bend that way. Likewise,
some projects require more structure than others, and if the tool
helps you enforce that structure, so much the better.  Less room for
human error.

Cheers,

-- Joe Knapka
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