[Gllug] Shell

[Bruce Richardson]

On 3/5/02, 1:52:57 AM, Chris Ball <chris at void.printf.net> wrote regarding 
Re: [Gllug] Shell:


> >>>>> "Harry" == nmeweb <Harry> writes:

>     Harry> Perl raises its ugly head more and more as something I need
>     Harry> to sit down and learn but I'm not masochistic.

> I think it's telling that I've only heard people who confess to having
> not understood or used Perl (same also applies for Java) tell me how
> ugly and broken it is.  Perhaps this is some form of rationalisation
> they have for their knowledge of how something works being lacking.
> Either way, it's never struck me as particularly intelligent.

A put-down so important you had to copy it to him?

Perl does look ugly to the uninitiated.  It has an extremely dense syntax 
and is full of what look initially like arbitrary decisions.  Once you 
get to understand Perl you see how clever the design is but even then a 
part of that cleverness is how new features have been implemented by 
cleverly recycling olde ones, which will always look like an ugly hack to 
some people.

Perl's OO implementation, for example, is both powerful and ingeniously 
constructed.  But it will look very messy to someone came to OO through 
ObjectPascal or PHP.  You'll even find perlmongers who say Perl's OO is 
ugly, though that may be down to anti-OO prejudices.

-- 

Bruce

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