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Perl is Sweet Sixteen
surflorida writes "Perl turned sweet 16 yesterday. 'Larry Wall released Perl 1 on this day in 1987, so today Perl is 16 years old. Happy birthday Perl! You can read more about the timeline of Perl releases in perlhist.pod and at history.perl.org.' Happy birthday Perl! You are now old enough to get a US drivers license."
For once the "you belong in a zoo" version of Happy Birthday is applicable.
But too old for Michael Jackson. Go ahead, mod me down! Muahahaha! ;)
Better lock up the car keys...
because what hunting rifle has a bayonet lug
At long last. PERL is legal!
http://siokaos.org/
Only 2 more years until shes legal, boys ;)
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
I could just imagine the kind of drivers license issued to Perl. First off, it would have a magnetic stripe, barcode, brail, and RFID encoded driver's license number on the back. The photo would be in the visual, infra-red, and ultraviolet spectrums. The license itself would be an actual 4d hypercube turning into your social security card, credit cards, gas cards, library cards, and translations of all the above into every language depending on the licenses orientation in space-time. In the event of emergency, the license would also be a flotation device and in the rare case of ending up on a desert island can be turned into a Swiss army knife and satellite GSM phone with GPS capabilities. Biometric identification built into the license allows it to change into the proper license for whoever is holding it. The license would be powered by a kinetic energy system similar to no-wind watches. It would also have a backup fusion generator, solar cells, hydrogen fuel cells, lithium ion battery banks, and be expandable for anti-mater generators once they become available.
Then you would lose it and it would be eaten by a snake.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
Yes. but it's only allowed to execute code until 11pm...and its parents damn well better not find out that it forks around, because it needs parental permission to kill a child process(should it fail to handle variables safely.)
Oh, and the kernel keeps a shotgun by the front door just in case any Java applets come around asking if Perl can go to the movies...
Please help metamoderate.
Happy birthday Perl! You are now old enough to get a US drivers license
hmm... i didn't know you needed a license to ride a camel
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Keep It Simple Stupid.
I guess we really can say Perl is sweet 16, never been KISS'd.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
We built a world-class business on the back of Perl. Nothing else would have done the trick.
THANKS LARRY.
It's not the mothers' sob stories. It's the facts. Teenagers have an extremely high accident rate. They are inherently bad drivers, every one of them. It was foolish of the state to allow me behind the wheel of a car when I was 16. I'm much better now that I know that "yes, you can die, asshole!" Let's rephrase that for the dense teenagers (all teenagers are dense) here in slashdot: You are NOT immortal.
BTW, my daughter is now a teenager and is doing the countdown to when she can get her permit and license. I highly recommend that in 2 years you stay off the roads. It won't be safe.
-- Will program for bandwidth
"Perl looks like an explosion at an ASCII factory" - I forget who said that.
:help the damned.
Here's a fun one. (Forgive me, I've had one too many Jack and Cokes). In VIM, enter
It'll come back with "There is no help for the damned"
Har har har. THat kills me. Time for another drink.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Only on slashdot, geeks make jokes about having sex with a programming language...
Perl has screwed me over lots of times. Its due.
http://saveie6.com/
This means that Pearl is also legal to have sex with in most states. So, if you want to give Pearl a "pearl necklace," go right ahead. Just make sure there is no drinking involved as that might jam you up with the law
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
i remember, oh, about 5 years ago, when i first met perl. it was the first language that i could actually do something in. even though i was using only a subset, mostly cgi stuff, and yet, i had POWER. i had several web sites up and running, data driven, mostly flat file stuff, but especially my school site, with 100 teachers, they could post homework, news, etc., we had a whole content driven site. all from perl with no database. i use java and python, as well as obj-c and cocoa, but damn, for me, there is still nothing like my first real love. perl.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
About the same amount of time it will take them to finish Perl 6!
It's an important milestone...0x10 years old! Whoo-hoo!
(the bold was added by me)
here
$message = $age ge 16 ? "Legal" : "Illegal"; echo $message;
That's all true, but almost anything that you can do in any of those languages you can do in Perl with 1/4 the code and in 1/8 the time.
So by sweet sixteen you are implying that a language that many geeks use is female? this makes sense now.
touch perl
finger perl
mount perl
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
I feels it's just as good as any other as a first language. From my perspective about all you get at first regardless of language is just a notion of variables, control structures and functions. New programmers never use the special features of whatever language they are on at the time as they don't know how to properly use them quiet yet. Once you feel you have the basics down all you need to learn going to other langues is some syntax. Good luck, have fun and don't give up. :)
-Dom
Perl turned 16 2 days ago, on Dec. 18th.
Happy belated birthday, anyway.
Two days? Come to your senses man, we're almost two months late!
(Dec 18 = Oct 22)
Sweet Sixteen is an older computer language designed by Steve Wozniak (see http://oldcomputers.net/byteappleII.html and http://www.fadden.com/dl-apple2/sweet16.txt) for the apple ][ and is a little less bloated than Perl.
Because it's pointless?
Perl is a different tool to C and C++ not because it's interpreted, but because of its language features. It's also (IMHO) a much more expressive language than C or C++, and has quite a few features that these languages lack (for instance, to have dynamic binding for new() in C++ requires a very ugly hack - see James O. Coplien's 'advanced C++ programming idioms' book for details), where Perl does this sort of thing with ease.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I think it all depends on what setting the new programmer is learning.
In an academic setting, there is a lot more room for teaching abstract concepts and giving a more thorough explanation than might be available in a self-taught environment. Also, there is a basis behind computer science that is completely language independent and requires a fundamental understanding of key concepts that might be best learned by writing 30 lines of C code for something that is implemented in perl using two lines. Things like linear linked lists and pointers come to mind.
I learned perl outside of an academic setting and thought I had a fairly good grasp of what was going on. Some of the things that myself or coworkers (mostly the coworkers) implemented using perl blow my mind to this day. But my understanding of programming concepts was way off. Things like good algorithm design, memory management, data abstraction, etc., were all essentially foreign concepts to me.
I've ranted long enough. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that people can learn as many languages as they want on their own, but unless they understand how and when to do things a certain way and why, their code is quite possibly no better than a "noble effort".
I'm not trying to troll here. I've just started realising over the past couple of weeks how important formal CS training is to good programming skills. Maybe psuedo-code is the way to go?
Actually I don't find the special cases very confusing at all. Perl has a specific paradigm... its hard to understand without working on it, but once it clicked for me, it became the easiest language I work with, beating out Visual Basic, QuickBasic, C++, COBOL... Those languages(except QuickBasic) still have their advantages, but once you learn Perl, its easy.
Its learning curve can be steep however, but once you get there, it pays off big.