[Gllug] Web Site Creation

[Aaron Trevena]

On 11/4/05, Nix <nix at esperi.org.uk> wrote:
> `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.

Sorry - with all the talk of pulling out fingernails or slow boiling
your innards in preference instead, I guessed you and tethys would
rather starve on the streets than use it ;)

> (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*

Right - I was naively thinking that if you paid somebody the right
ammount and provided the basic requirements - they would do a decent
job. Perl meets at least basic requirements for most common or garden
development work - I wouldn't suggest you write the next air traffic
control system in perl 5 (maybe perl 6) or Quake 11 or whatever with
it either.

But the initial thread, if you look at the subject was TT for
websites, and if you can put together a half way decent website using
ASP (not very nice experience but entirely possible if you are a
professional), then it is a pleasure in Perl.

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

Yes. You have to draw a line somewhere :)

> > 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?

It isn't irrational - I use lisp in emacs, although when I think about
it I have no idea where the hell else it used on any day to day basis
- any big business or important industry use it? Don't think so. What
about a killer app that would make me consider it for a similar task
-- nope! What about suggesting using it in place of something anybody
else in the office has heard of -- hardly.

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

A professonial environment is where people pay you and both your
livelihoods depend on it's success. Of course life sucks, so many
projects fail with no impact on anything, and we all know that there
are 'professional' developers who are clearly unprofessional. Don't
blame the language if you have to work with their crap.

> > "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.)

Fair enough, thats your opinion - for a huge swathe of people this
isn't the case.

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

It's my bitch, I have the t-shirt, I've written modules and do it for
a living - I could be talking about the compiler, the community or the
language so sticking to all lowercase is fine. Using all CAPS is
mispelling it.

> > 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.

Not necessarily kludge - if it does the job, is maintainable,
documented, and reliable, etc then it's a professional job - the fact
the client made some dumb decisions (whether about the technology,
project management, team, price, schedule, colour, market,
functionality) doesn't make it any less professional. Coping with that
and earning your keep is what makes you professional in my eyes.

> > 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.

Hang - 'by rest of us' that is you and nix, unless you want to
associate yourself with the fucktards on slashdot. If you said horses
for courses, I wouldn't complain but trotting out crap about lack of
maintainability and poking out your eyes in preference is hardly
pragmatic or diplomatic - it comes accross as rabid and
unprofessional.

Perl isn't the best tool for everything but it is bloody good at most
programming jobs outside of Games and GUI driven stuff.

> 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.)

Actually I rather like C# and C++ as well as perl, smalltalk was
interesting but I never had a chance to use it in anger, and daily I
use a variety of languages - this is the norm. I don't have the
prejudice - I just don't like people who scream nasty comments
whenever somebody mentions perl... and I get called rabid. *sigh*

A.
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