kentnl

Posted - January 13, 2011

Marked Dead - April 22, 2011

Today - Aug 5, 2014

Yeah, being eVIl, they probably use Vi.

That's still partially rubbish, because you don't build technology on top of a fax machine. Many of the technologies at the higher level are directly written in C, and its going to be a while before the C goes away.

I.e.: its like a world where all our cellphones/email still, under the covers, run over fax, and we still need a fax machine in every house to make this possible. =P

Without people to write the languages in C, and without people to hack on the kernel in C, there will be no more languages, and existing C based languages will get no more features.

The best you can do now is write one high-level language in another, and that tends to be reasonably slow.

Just because you don't understand something, or because you don't know anybody who does, that doesn't mean that technology is disappearing, it just means you're in a selective circle.

Without a testing infrastructure, you pretty much rely on programmers having code doing what they say it does, instead of having proof it does what they say it does.

Given human penchant to slip up and not realise problems until after they are encountered, having tests makes pretty much the difference between "science" and "hypothesis"

Probably a good reason to use Perl too, finding a machine without it is hard. =)

Because sometimes objects are the right answer, and when they are the right answer, you want to be maximally equipped to use them as easy as possible.

Perl doesn't bash you over the head and make you use objects by making "int" an object, but they're there if you need them.

( And if you really need to, you can make int at least look like an object )

Tests. Integrated Bug Tracking. There's 2 reasons.

You haven't really started using Ruby till you start trying to JAPH and golf it. Fortunately, that phase will pass and you'll return to writing maintainable code =).

>> "The idea of making tools that are joyful to use to the programmers ... basically due to it's syntax."

Thats pretty much entirely "who is working in this language" based imo. As for syntax being a limitation, its interesting you complain that, because others have complained that the syntax is too dynamic, too augmentable, and too unpredictable, hence people talking stuff about it being impossible to write a parser for it =).

Granted, often when this feature is used, its often abused, and there are various 'source filters' in Acme:: you'd get shot if you tried using them in production ( Switch.pm is one such shootable offsense ... with great power comes ... extra unwanted side effects ).

But an example of a Good use of the source filter/metaprogramming nature intrinsic to Perl is MooseX::Declare ( its only part source filter, but its "Sane" because its smart enough to not cause too many unwanted side effects ) to provide alternative class declaration syntax, that some would claim, even looks readable!.

   use 5.010;
   use MooseX::Declare; 
   
 
   class Foo { 
         method hello( $what ){ 
             say "Hello $what";
         }
   }

   Foo->new()->hello("World");  # Hellow World\n

Nice idea, but what tends to happen is this:

    -- User1235 has joined #perl --
    user1235> PERL SUCKS 111!!!11!!1!!11!!
    -- Chanserv set mode +o mst --
    -- user1235 was kicked ( troll ) --

The people who are honestly interested tend not to need the door shown to them, and people who aren't interested can't be convinced by such tactics.

Protip: you'll get more people interested in you if you spell it Perl instead of PERL. Despite appearances, 'Perl' is not an acronym, there are backronyms for it, but that doesn't mean its an acronym.

I say this only because you give the illusion of knowing something about what you are talking about, and its merely sad to me that you can use Perl for 10 years and never learn this.

( And sadly, not knowing Perl is not an acronym looks bad to people who know different, and thus instantly assume you're not very experienced in Perl )

Pointer Syntax? What? I'm not trying to be an ass here, but I'm confused as how you could have a decade of Perl use up your sleeve and not realise Perl has no pointers. It has references, perhaps, and perhaps I'm just being a semantic pedant, but they're quite different to me.

Then again, I actually find C/C++ pointer tracking and memory allocation daunting, so perhaps that is why I find Perl references more intuitive than not?

In my estimation you can make Perl harder to work with if you try, but you can also make it easier. ie: regular expressions are easier to work with if you use the /x modifier so you can whitespace fill it and document the regex itself, you can do things the hard way with objects, or you can use something like CPAN and get a module that makes this easy ( Moose is my favourite ).

Sure, Perl is perhaps hard for people, I'll give you that, but it doesn't have to be.

If you'd only seen PHP a few times, applying for a job in it may not be the brightest idea. ( If you have enough experience you could probably do a reasonably good bluff and learn-as-you-go, but not recommended ).

I'd suggest something like rating your experience with various things, either by giving it a points/stars rating system, or by having categories such as "Proficient In:" and "Some Experience with:" and "Have also used:" , possibly with examples of where and how you used it.

Hey, wasn't that the year the economy started to go south? .... Obviously, people stopped employing people in Perl, and the economy took a steep dive because of it!. Use Perl! Save the economy!.

( nb. for people with no sense of humour, this was a stab at people who don't understand that correlation != causation )

I see limited use for a digital toaster, there are some perks you /could/ see like having personalized settings which somehow just know which person is using them ( RFID? ) and sets the appropriate toast setting for that person.

Possibly detection on what it is toasting ( ie: hash-browns, muffin-splits ) and "smarter" toasting ( ie: using an optical sensor to measure surface browning, and using a laser thermometer to measure core temperature ( which is required for hash browns because they're often still cold in the middle :( ) ), but these are all purely practical features and I'd want the toaster still 100% practical with no knowledge of these features.

But I'm guessing these sorts of features are not the ones they implement, and probably add silly things like an LCD screen with a countdown timer, and a blingy screensaver, and a robotic toast loader ( ok, on the other side I can see how that would be useful, I do get annoyed every time the toaster is a little too eager and throws my toast in the air and into the sink ..... ) , and they probably add useless features like bread-decorating toasting with high powered lasers or something equally stupid.