[Gllug] Web Site Creation

[Nix]

On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Aaron Trevena moaned:
> On 11/3/05, Martin A. Brooks <martin at hinterlands.org> wrote:
>> Stephen Harker wrote:
>> > Aaron Trevena wrote:
>> >> Then you really aren't much use as a sysadmin or programmer IMHO.
>> >
>> > Can you please elaborate as to why you think this rather than just
>> > foaming. I'd be interested.
> 
> It is simply unprofessional for a start. Perl is heavily used in
> enough places that the rabid dislike you find in some of these
> intelligent corners of GLLUG and slashdot is simply not practical or
> professional.

`Rabid'? I dislike it *and I use it* --- the language is horrible,
but the library is not, and for a lot of practical tasks the library
dominates.

(And no, repeating `professional' isn't going to impress many of us
here. Getting paid for it is *not* some sort of sign of great skill:
I've known a lot of idiot professionals, and a lot of exceedingly
skilled amateurs. Indeed because people can be attracted to programming
by the money, there are a lot more idiot professionals than skilled
ones, I sometimes feel :( )

> Any decent programmer or sysadmin can do their job very well using
> perl,

What, regardless of the job? *boggle*

>       this isn't the case for ASP or coldfusion or the oddities like

agreed.

> lisp which it would be unreasonable to expect people to use in a
> professional environment.

So you should reject languages because they are `oddities'? What's an
`oddity'? A language you have an irrational prejudice against?

(And *again* we see this `in a professional environment' canard trotted
out. What's so special about them?)

> "sorry Guv, I don't do perl' is just a copout for people who lack
> programming experience or knowledge,

Actually it might just mean that they've learned many other languages
and haven't got around to Perl yet. (This is amplified by the fact that
the sort of person who learns languages for fun isn't generally going to
learn an ugly monster like Perl until they have to for some reason or
another. It's just that Perl is so *useful* for little hacks that if you
do much sysadmin work that'll come sooner rather than later: but for
non-sysadminish stuff other languages are frequently preferable.)

(Oh, and you keep misspelling the name of the language. It's Perl,
not perl.)

>                                      I certainly wouldn't want
> somebody like that on any team I work in. In the time I've been in my
> current job I've worked with PHP, ASP, Java and C# - as well as plenty
> of perl and as I said before the worst code by a long shot was the ASP

Oh god, yes, ASP and JSP share the same flaw: intermingling of multiple
totally different languages on one page combined with the
macro-expansion illegibility trap. I fell into the JSP hole once a few
years back; I'll still do bits of it but *all* the functionality and as
much of everything else as I can gets pushed out of the JSP and down
to lower layers. (This is what all the books say you should do, and
then your coworkers listen to your boss when he says that would take
too long...)

> - and worse still was that you can't make a decent solution with it.
> Nonetheless you get on with the job and do the best with the tools
> you've got.

Ah! So a `professional environment' is one where you must kludge stuff
up with poor tools because they're all that is available for political
reasons.

Yep, sounds like what I'm used to all right. (Only I don't tend to even
have Perl because our clients are too conservative to install it. In the
past I've had to write filesystem manipulation scripts in a mix of
Solaris's ancient /bin/sh and crude K&R C that compiles with HP/UX 10's
bundled compiler... and, yes, Perl is heaven compared to *that*, even
without CPAN.)

>> "Well I'll write a perl script that can....." is a very reassuring start
>> to an answer at interview time for a sysadmin role.
>>
>> I would be _really_ wary about hiring a sysadmin who doesn't write perl.

Snap. This is Perl's one really strong point.

> I just wouldn't hire somebody who didn't know and like perl for a
> system administration or system integration role. They clearly don't
> have sufficient understanding of the tools required for the job.

Unix sysadmin, sure (note that e.g. S/390 admin jobs require a quite
different mix of skills). System integration, that depends what you're
integrating. I've even seen people do glue stuff in Java and JNI,
although I boggled at it (the result worked exceptionally well and was
more maintainable than any Java I've ever seen since).

> Not knowing or understanding perl is acceptable in a junior programmer
> fresh out of academia which only teaches c#, c++ or java - but they
> usually don't have the irrational hatred of the python, php and scheme
> zealots you see in these parts and can learn to be pragmatic and
> professional.

I hate to say it, but the only irrational hatred I see a sign of here is
coming from you. The rest of us are saying `Perl is pig-ugly but useful,
but other things may often be more suitable'. *That* is a pragmatic
judgement. What you're saying comes across as `Perl is the One True Way,
all Perl, everywhere, all the time, someone who doesn't know how to
write it is nearly useless'. This is rubbish.


You might note that a large number of the Perl implementors --- Abigail,
Simon Cozens, Kirrily `Skud' Robert and Mark-Jason Dominus spring
immediately to mind --- came to Perl having had considerable experience
with more theoretically pure languages and continue to feed ideas from
such languages into Perl (well, I say that but I'm not sure if all those
people are still involved in Perl implementation, I've been out of the
Perl hacking community for a year or two). The Perl implementors don't
seem to have your prejudice against non-Perl languages. (And a good
thing too.)

-- 
`Heinlein is quite competent at putting together sentences, but usually
he also puts together a plot to go with them.' --- Russ Allbery
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