Apocalypse 3

rob_99 writes: "The third installment of the Apocalypse is out!" You may have missed the first or second Apocalypses. This one is roughly "all about operators".

Comments

Breaking out of your own culture

[Water Paradox]

"Breaking out of your culture is also important, because that is how we understand other cultures. As an explicitly multicultural language, Perl has generally done OK in this area, though we can always do better. Examples of cross-cultural exchange among computer cultures include XML and Unicode. (Not surprisingly, these features also enable better cross-cultural exchange among human cultures -- we sincerely hope.)"

It is for statements like this, that I am drawn into studying and using Perl. Many designers try to design a langauge which develops its own internal culture; it becomes static and internally consistent, but not very adventurous. Larry Wall seeks to develop a language which has built-in the fact that we like to explore, making his task more difficult, but a language which moves and flows with the evolution of our culture readily.

Keep up the great work!

As I sheepishly back away...

[hillct]

I never really thought about how valuable perl really is. I use it constantly. I use it based on the syntactic rules set fourth in the cammel book. I never considered evaluating changes to the language (well, not to any great degree anyway. While I find Larry Wall's series of articles interesting, I just can't get excited about changing the language in it's next incarnation. It works. It's an effective tool. That's good enough to me. I'm not saying don't change it, so much as in it's role as a tool I find it valuable, but when given the opportunity to provide feedback on how to change it I'm at a loss.

Now, I consider my job to be 'Intranet Systems Arhitect' as distinct from 'Programmer'. Perhaps that's why I can't get excited about changing a tool I've come to depend on in it's current form. Perhaps true programmers might find the prospect fascinating. perhaps you could liken it to the difference between an army officer and a gunsmith. While both make use of guns at various times, only the gunsmith is inclined to take the gun apart, examine it and make a better one.

Or perhaps I'm just not showing the proper community spirit, and I should dive in and offer my two cents on how to make the language better. Maybe I'm just lazy (then again, isn't that why perl is such a great language...)

--CTH