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Larry Wall's State of the Onion 8

Posted by michael on from the layered-and-makes-you-cry dept.

zachlipton writes "Perl.com has posted Larry Wall's State of the Onion talk from this year's Open Source Convention and The Perl Conference. Through the use of various screensavers, Wall talks a bit about himself, and of course, Perl and Perl 6."

3 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Python is a reality by Uber+Banker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Everything in Smalltalk is an object too. It also has a clean and clear syntax. It has been around for DECADES! Why not use that if everything being an object, and clean and clear syntax, are so revolutionary?

  2. Re:Python is a reality by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Why not use that if everything being an object, and clean and clear syntax, are so revolutionary?

    One reason is the Goldilocks factor:

    Lisp: too many parentheses
    Smalltalk: not enough parentheses
    Python: just right

    Smalltalk: too many colons
    Lisp: not enough colons
    Python: just right

  3. Re:Perl, it's the new COBOL by chromatic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think it's a false dilemma that you can either use Perl flexibly or write maintainable code. Surely a flexible language allows you to choose a coding approach that fits your team!

    Regardless, I fail to see how agreeing on minutiae such as brace placement and indentation will make Perl inflexible. I don't understand on how agreeing to write short subroutines, use a consistent and descriptive naming scheme, and build a comprehensive test suite is unperlish.

    In short, I think if your team can agree on a coding style, you can solve the maintainability program.

    If you can't agree on a coding style, it doesn't matter which language you choose.

    --
    how to invest, a novice's guide