[Gllug] Perl Question - Spam Filter for NMS Form Mail

[Dave Cross]

Aaron Trevena wrote:
> 2009/2/13 - Tethys <tethys at gmail.com>:
>
>> There's nothing inherently wrong with the language, but
>> as the saying goes, "hell is other peoples' perl". As soon as it
>> ceases to be a single developer project, maintenance nightmares
>> follow.
> 
> Seriously, change the record.

Why would he change the record? I think he's spot on. The vast majority
or Perl that the average developer or sysadmin comes across is
badly-written, unmaintainable spaghetti.

Yes, it doesn't absolutely need to be like that. And yes, Aaron, because
you're closely involved with the Perl community you see a lot of
well-written and maintainable code. You may even write it yourself. But
that doesn't change the fact that most people's experience of Perl isn't
like that.

Yes, Tethys seems to have a knee-jerk "Perl is crap" reaction whenever
the language is mentioned. But your knee-jerk reaction to his knee-jerk
reaction is almost as annoying :-)

>> I appreciate it's only anecdotal evidence, but it's been true
>> in 100% of perl projects to which I've had personal exposure, and
>> there is plenty of supporting evidence to show that I'm not a
>> statistical outlier there, either. YMMV.
> 
> You mean there is a small but noisy crowd of python/ruby fanboyz who
> agree with your personal grudge.

No. He means that most Perl code out there is crap. Really. It's the
truth. Look at the Perl code that most people who don't specialise in
Perl will see - awstats, mrtg, majordomo, Matt's scripts. It's no wonder
that people think that Perl is unreadable.

And the answer isn't to keep telling people that they're wrong. They can
see that they're not wrong and continually telling them that they are
just makes them think that you're a liar.

I love Perl. I'm most productive in Perl and I like to think that the
Perl I leave behind me is better than most of the rubbish I am given to
work on. But I don't pretend that the badly-written, unmaintainable Perl
is a statistical outlier. I know that it's the norm and it's the Perl
that you and I like to write that is abnormal.

Cheers,

Dave...
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