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For Sale: 1 Damian Conway, 1 Dan Sugalski
Kurt writes "Yet Another Society, through its newly formed Perl Foundation, is launching yet another fund drive to help support the Perl community. This year we will be supporting Damian Conway and Dan Sugalski. Damian will continue to work on a variety of Perl 5 modules and the design of Perl 6. Dan will continue his work on the implementation of Perl 6. More details are available at the Perl Foundation web site. Contributions are tax deductible, so donate today!" Many people will remember when we did this last year. I think it's been a roaring success. So go donate!
Yes, it is horribly complex.
Look at that hello world program for example:
print "Hello World!";
Now, that's some complex piece of software. Ok, let's say you want to have a list of strings. You could do so like that:
@list = ("element1", "element2", "element3")
Well, just try to do the same in C.
Contrary to popular belief, Perl is easy. The thing is that you don't need to know everything to use it. Just a small subset will satisfy you.
People think it is hard because of the syntax and variety of constructs you can use. Well, for sure Perl is very flexible. But in no way it is a defficiency of the language. Perl is of course better suited to some tasks, as is any programming language.
And to those who think that all Perl programs are incomprehensible pieces of rubbish, remember this: Only Bad Programmers Code Badly in Perl(tm).
cheers
Perhaps the Perl community could calculate some recommended annual contribution per line of code for companies that use Perl. (E.g. 100k lines of code at $0.01/line/year = $1000.) Do some comparisons with how much companies pay for commercial compilers compared to how many lines of code they have to show them that they are getting a good deal (applying corrections for the absence of tech support and manuals not being included in the price.)
Of course, the Perl Foundation is not the only ligitimate recipient of such contributions.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
> print "Hello World!";
printf "Hello World!";
> @list = ("element1", "element2", "element3")
char list[]={"element1","element2","element3"};
> Well, just try to do the same in C.
i just did. of course, to compile it, you need to:
#include
int
main()
{ }
but those lines are trivial in any program.
The more examples I see of this the more I've come to see that the open-source development model is getting less and less credible as a way to do large-scale projects.
Developing software using the proprietary model may not always produce the greatest code, but there's no doubt that it provides a good income to thousands of developers with average skills that allows them to support their families.
On one hand: This is great for Perl. Anyone who has dabbled in the language knows that Damian has Plans for Perl what we mere mortals can never truly understand. I'm still drooling over the thought of a proper switch statement in Perl. As for curried expressions, well, if they're anything as good as curried chicken, I'm all for it.
On the other hand: There's a whole generation of Monash University students growing up without having the joy of being taught by Damian. The poor things are getting substandard teaching (well, actually, they're probably getting standard teaching; what I know they're not getting is superstandard teaching), and they are graduating without the fond memories of the acted-out-in-lectures singles-bar analogy for C++ polymorphism. (You Monash graduates know what I'm talking about.)
On the gripping hand: I'm easily the next-best Perl programmer to be teaching at Monash University. With Damian out of the way, it's only a matter of time before total domination of Monash is mine . . .