Live Nightclub Hacking

rjjm writes "Alex Mclean has written a stormin' article at perl.com on Hacking Perl In Nightclubs. Alex programmes live on stage to perform his music."

Comments

I like perl

[Slashbot Hive-Mind]

'm going to stick my neck out and say I like Perl -- so I think this is good news. However, I've always thought of Perl as a text-processing language, and In My Limited Experience, mobile phones can only fit about ten words on the screen. {on the other hand, this could simply lead to phones with bigger screens.}

There's no denying that you can write really ugly code in Perl, but you can also write beautiul code in Perl. I think some of the people who knock Perl are confusing "undisciplined" with "not anal retentive". Perl was always based around the idea of serving the end rather than the means -- it's about where you're at, rather than how you got there. It does not impose a particular style on the programmer. Thus, for any given task, there could be many, many ways to accomplish it in Perl.

They're all right.

Some will be faster than others, some will use fewer resources than others, some will look prettier then others when viewed as source. But if you don't care enough about those things to mention them in the design spec, then they don't matter.

Now, you can have your fancy object-oriented stuff, but in many ways it's overkill. For instance, if you needed to write a programme involving geometry, you could create an Angle object which would have a value assumed to be in radians and properties for its sine, cosine, tangent and representation in degrees; a Distance object which would have properties for its representation in different measuring units; and assigning a value to any property would affect the object and therefore its other properties. It might be beautiful if you like the OO concept, but it's a bit overkill if you just want to find the missing side of a triangle.

And does a "disposable" programme -- one that you will run only a few times before forgetting it forever -- really need to look pretty anyway?

As for PHP, well, it really isn't much different from Perl -- apart from always needing to put brackets around function parameters, the fact that all variables start with a $ sign whether scalar, array or hash and there is no $_. {I happen to love $_. It goes nicely with the concept of an accumulator. If you never did any assembly language, you probably won't know what I'm talking about, though}. That is hardly surprising, because the original PHP was actually written in Perl to be like a kind of subset of Perl.

Also, one of my little niggles -- and I freely admit that this is just my own opinion -- is the inability to get on with any language that uses the plus sign as the string concatenation operator while letting you freely mix string and numberic variables. {*cough* ruby *cough*} I expect "2" + 2 to equal 4, not 22. Hell, if I have to do something to my variables before I can add them, that just nullified the advantage of having freely-mixable scalar types! It might as well be a strict-typed language and barf on an expression such as "2" + 2!

As for Python - well, it's not my cup of tea {I guess you like either Perl or Python} but other people seem to have written some pretty good stuff in it, so I shan't knock it.

Re:I like perl

[Ignignot]

Yeah um... I'm gunna go ahead and disagree with you on this one.

The true value of any code is its current use combined with its reusability. Yes, it is nice to be able to write some code that does something useful quickly. But that code that can be used again and again is extremely valuable - and is especially valuable when other programmers can also reuse your code. Perl is hard to reuse when you wrote your own program. For someone else to understand it is a nightmare. And yes, I've written software in perl. I've written in assembly, basic, visual basic, C, C++, Pascal, matlab, excel, delphi, and bash. Only assembly rivals perl in incomprehensibility, and that is only when it isn't commented. Perl's lack of structure is an impediment to other people reusing the code. For a one-off program, or something very well defined and documented, Perl is fine. But it sure ain't pretty.

Re:I like perl

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean there's no $_ in PHP? Please explain.

Re:I like perl

[meedle]

What's next? People programing robots to dance for them?

Re:I like perl

[rjstanford]

Perl's lack of structure is an impediment to other people reusing the code. For a one-off program, or something very well defined and documented, Perl is fine. But it sure ain't pretty.

I'd have to agree with you there. I used Perl a lot several years ago, so I'm familiar with it, but rusty. I happen to need to modify a 500 line script (that someone else wrote) the other day, to sort lines by the last word (numberically). No problem, I'll do a little googling since my Perl books are all in cold storage.

I'll be honest. I couldn't understand most of the *examples*. I'm used to maintaining large programs - millions of LOC, thousands of database tables. I'm familiar with multiple languages. This experience - the ability to write 4 lines of code as a sample in such a way as to be confusing - reminded me of the reason that I don't use Perl any more.

I'm sure the solution is simple. I just decided that I didn't care enough to wade through it and pick out the pieces of example code - already written for me - that I needed to use instead of my little { $a $b } snippet. So I didn't bother. That's sad. But hey, I'm not doing this because I enjoy Perl, but because I had a problem to solve. The last thing I want to do is spend 30 minutes deciphering the language to do that.

Somehow, even normal perl code - when not written with great discipline - seems to approach entries from an obfuscated C contest.

Re:I like perl

[rjstanford]

First - that should be { $a <=> $b }.

Second - I'm sure that many of you can post the answer. That's not why I'm posted this - I've moved on and its not a huge deal. Just for the record so you don't feel that I'm asking for code help by complaining about something (although that's probably a very effective way to do so...)

Re:I like perl

[jallen02]

Though, think about the thousands of little Perl scripts that do this and that, each one using some little syntax trick or another. The end result is that to REALLY understand all the scripts out there you have to basically learn all of the dialects of Perl. Its like learning several child languages that are all a part of this twisted parent language. It kills me to have to remember syntax rules like that.

Compare that to almost any python script out there. The syntax is the same, the program can still "do it more than one way", but it does it with a more clear syntax that is easier to follow. I think the idea that there is more than one way to do it is true for just about any programming language. There are the preferred methods, but nothing is stopping you from coding your own library or method of performing this task or that.

Its the same reason LISP is a great academic language but not a commercial success, even though it is so very powerful to those that can wield it. You can basically re-define the meaning of everything you see, and often its encouraged as you are basically writing source code that is the parse tree of the program! (I Know this isn't true for Perl, but it feels the same way, the language can be varied so much maintaining disparate and differeing scripts can be difficult). Data, oh thats all a part of the parse-tree/program. XML? Bah, the Lisp guys invented that with the S-Expression etc. ;)

Now then, you could still use Perl with complete efficiency in a project that standardized on various language constructs, but you WOULD have to standardize or you would be in a maintenance and integration hell :)

I just think its much better to have a powerful and easy to use language that doesn't introduce artificial hurdles like syntax constructs that can easily be more understandable in any other programming language. Anyway, I will stop prattling. I know that people who like Perl will stay using Perl because they did bother to learn all of the Arcane syntax and now they feel they should inflict their sick and twisted knowledge on the rest of the world ;););) (Just kidding).

Jeremy

Re:I like perl

[maximilln]

It might as well be a strict-typed language and barf on an expression such as "2" + 2!

That's my personal preference. I don't want the language that I use to try and make assumptions about what to do with the combination of different types of variables. As a programmer I feel that it enforces a valid and advantageous logic of purism when the language requires that the programmer be constantly aware of delineations between variable types. This mindset encourages the programmer to constantly think about what data is passed using the variables. I feel that, if this were strictly enforced, it would lead to fewer buffer overflows. Programmers in general would be mindful that the data in the buffer might not be what they expect.

Certainly this approach may require routines to translate variables from one type to another and back. Graphical toolkits evolved and so would variable transformations.

Re:I like perl

[The Unabageler]

the ability to read different programming languages is the same as being able to read different human languages. It's a matter of differing grammar, syntax and character notations. Not everyone can grasp chinese or russian or hebrew, but does that make them valueless languages? I didn't think so. You'll especially run into problems if you try and read/write chinese as if it were english, or perl as if it were C.

Re:I like perl

[chromatic]

I feel that, if this were strictly enforced, it would lead to fewer buffer overflows.

Ever programmed in C?

Re:I like perl

[cygnus]

Now, you can have your fancy object-oriented stuff, but in many ways it's overkill. For instance, if you needed to write a programme involving geometry, you could create an Angle object which would have a value assumed to be in radians and properties for its sine, cosine, tangent and representation in degrees; a Distance object which would have properties for its representation in different measuring units; and assigning a value to any property would affect the object and therefore its other properties. It might be beautiful if you like the OO concept, but it's a bit overkill if you just want to find the missing side of a triangle.

well, there's more than one way to do it in object oriented languages as well. you don't have to go through all that abstraction if it doesn't help solve the problem. hell, you could just write one class with one main method/function and pretend like you were writing procedural code to a large extent.

or you could just write in perl when you needed to and in OO stuff when you needed to. that's what i do.

Re:I like perl

[balbord]

Ok... this may seem a BIT stupid, but here it goes.

2 words: Job security!

Write extremely beautiful code and any other under-payed monkey can tap it and send you to the wonderful land of the unemployed.

If you, on the other hand, refuse to comment (no time), write it like the devil itself would(that's not messy, its just... err... too complicated for your IQ), and voilá... no one in their right mind will mess with it... at least until your employer gets fed up with you and kicks you in the arss.

Coding guerrilla, anyone?

Ahhh... but what do I know?

Re:I like perl

[L7_]

or something very well defined and documented

Isn't that the same thing with all programs in any programming language? If you have an esoteric line with no comment around it to back up the twelve operations that its doing, then it is going to be confusing no matter what its written in.

I think the thing with perl is that it can be almost too powerful for the amount of time that you have to put into writing a script, therefore if you only spend 5 minutes writing it and it would take you 10 minutes to write it with proper commenting, then most people won't bother commenting thier code. Just like anything, the comment/documentation problem resides when a 5 minute script becomes a two month project. In any language.

Re:I like perl

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even RTFA?! Who cares if you like Perl or not. People are way too uptight about which language is better than which. Who cares. It does not really matter. The article itself is not singing wonderful praises to Perl anyway. This is not the place to do that. Maybe you should post something about what the article is talking about next time. This should not be the first comment on this article.

Re:I like perl

[Camel Pilot]

As a prior poster already commented on CPAN is a paragon of code reusability. I never program anything significant without relying on someone elses work via use of a CPAN modules.

Only assembly rivals perl in incomprehensibility

Uh! Perl is on the other end of the spectrum from assembly.

I place Perl on the same tier as Matlab (or Octave). If you are working with vectors of numbers use Matlab if you working with strings use Perl.

It seems that there is alway a segment of the population that knee jerks about Perl poor maintainability but they never really provide good examples or specifics - it is always their "informed opinion".

Take ubiquitous C for example, please provide several short bullets why you think C is superior to Perl for code reuse or maintainability?

Here are a few why I prefer using Perl over C when possible ( not bashing C as it certainly has its place )

Integrated Hashes

Integrated Regular Expressions. ie

if ( $str = /\s+#/ ) { next }
or
$str =~ s/this/that/;

Variable interpolation

$str = "Now is the time for all good $gender to come to the aid of the party."

Much nicer than using strcat or the + syntax of Javascript or VB.

Symbolic reference or variable variables. ie.

$var = 'color';
$$var = 123;
Now $color stores 123

OO and traditional constructs - use what works for the given problem. If I am doing a global search and replace on a list of file I am sure not going to spend time creating an Object.

Implied loop functions such as grep, map and sort.

Great binary data manipulation with pack and unpack.

Great connectivity to databases

Cpan with modules like LWP, Dumper, Storable, DataManip, DBI, Socket, Find, etc.

I could go on but I would like to hear from your experience now...

Re:I like perl

[bladesjester]

Ever have to make modifications to your own code several months later? I have. Trying to figure out where you need to make the changes in code made in the way you describe is a bloody nightmare.

Re:I like perl

[maximilln]

I said fewer, not none. :)

The only way to really know would be to do a double-blind crossover trial of 10000 programmers given the same kernel-sized assignment in two different languages and compare the number of overflows in each matching the two subject groups for time spent, length of code, number and grouping of variables and arrays, and possibly even match them for the institution that they were schooled at to accomodate for different trends in teaching methods. It's pretty much impossible.

All things being equal, a strict structure produces fewer errors.

Re:I like perl

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, one of my little niggles -- and I freely admit that this is just my own opinion -- is the inability to get on with any language that uses the plus sign as the string concatenation operator while letting you freely mix string and numberic variables. {*cough* ruby *cough*} I expect "2" + 2 to equal 4, not 22.

foo@bar:~$ ruby -e '"2" + 2'
-e:1:in `+': cannot convert Fixnum into String (TypeError)
from -e:1

Re:I like perl

[chromatic]

All things being equal, a strict structure produces fewer errors.

That may be true, but all things are not equal.

I don't have the impression you're talking about a language with an actual working static type system, such as Haskell or ML. The amount of bookkeeping the type systems of Pascal, C, Java, and C++ force on the programmer is significant. If you're concerned about programmer productivity, efficacy, and correctness, I think you have to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the abstractions the language provides.

A language that forces you to think about the storage size and layout of every variable is certainly strict, but is that really the kind of strictness that prevents errors?

Re:I like perl

[rjstanford]

It seems that there is alway a segment of the population that knee jerks about Perl poor maintainability but they never really provide good examples or specifics - it is always their "informed opinion".

Probably because any time there's a discussion like this, posts talking about real-life perl issues rapidly get modded -1 Flamebait.

Re:I like perl

[maximilln]

The amount of bookkeeping the type systems of Pascal, C, Java, and C++ force on the programmer is significant

I don't see that as a bad thing. Writing routines to draw boxes, circles, requesters, dialogs, or windows is a significant load on programmers. Eventually programmers created libraries such as the svgalibs and evolved towards X11. X11 inherited additional functionality through interfaces such as GTK, Qt, GDK, KDE libs, or whatever Windows uses. The area isn't really my forte but it shows that if a large and cumbersome task is needed again and again the programmers will write libraries to handle the necessary manipulations.

With languages that attempt to intuitively guess at manipulating variables of different types there's no need to work on refining a system to generate numerical values from strings or to think of strings as numerical values (ML). If that very basic division is a constant reminder to the programmer that a "420" isn't really a 420, combined with the considerations of what it's going to take to turn that set of ASCII values into the proper number, some of it may carryover the next time someone else's library is #included.

If you're concerned about programmer productivity, efficacy, and correctness

Heh. :-) That's a bean-counter issue, not a programming issue. We all know that the managers want more code, faster, with fewer noticeable bugs, and they want it last quarter. I feel this is why the proprietary code industry constantly reinvents itself with new featureware. The latest programming language can just as easily be a product of the push for featureware or the latest end-around flanking maneuver to hedge in the market with IP. Strictly speaking it can't compete in quality with the code produced by enthusiasts who don't have deadlines and don't have a corporate agenda that needs them to use the latest macro library in order to use features which will justify a patent or IP lawsuit.

A language that forces you to think about the storage size and layout of every variable is certainly strict, but is that really the kind of strictness that prevents errors

It's certainly not the only mode of thought that prevents errors. You and I both know that good programming is like good health--there's no single magic secret. If the programmer develops the intricate mode of thought it will aid their programming just as a routine of gentle exercise aids health. You just need to remember to do it often enough for it to eventually become an embedded mode. In today's world being pedantic about variables isn't stressed because enough languages make the correct assumptions (and because managers don't like to have their superiority challenged). I feel that the overall model created explains why security isn't a strong point in proprietary code. The reason is both economical and philosophical.

That may be true, but all things are not equal

You're right. I don't program for a living so I can afford to preach from the philosophical armchair of ideality. :-) I've found that if I talk about the ideal points of my own industry (pharmaceutical R&D) the people above me on the corporate ladder turn quite rude.

Re:I like perl

[Anonymous Coward]

(((There's no denying that you can write really ugly code in Perl, but you can also write beautiul code in Perl.)))

That's not the problem, the problem is that you can do things so many different ways. Once you start on big projects, it's a huge pain in the ass.

There's absolutely no sane reason why there should be lists AND arrayrefs .. which do you return from a function? And if you return one in a scalar context and another in a list context, then everything breaks when you use the function call in an argument list:

sub foo { return (1,2,3) }
bar("blarg", foo()) # same as bar("blarg", 1, 2, 3)

And objects are awful in perl, because you "roll your own" based on some underlying scalar ref. If the other guy used a listref and you want to use a hashref, you have to go back and change all his code anyway.

Yes Perl is powerful and has a lot of libraries and you can write good/bad code in any language, but Perl sure doesn't encourage it!

Since I've discovered Ruby I've never turned back. Ruby is amazing times 10!

(((That is hardly surprising, because the original PHP was actually written in Perl to be like a kind of subset of Perl.)))

Heh, PHP is definitely a SUBset of Perl, that's for sure. PHP makes me want to jam forks in my eyes. A lot of the pain is taken away by using code generators written in other languages thankfully.

((( {*cough* ruby *cough*} I expect "2" + 2 to equal 4, not 22. )))

Dude, this is *Ruby* we're talking about, if you don't like it, change it:

class String
alias old_plus +
def +(o)
case o
when Integer
to_i + o
when Float
to_f + o
else
old_plus o
end
end
end

puts "2" + 4 # 4 (Integer)
puts "2" + "foo" # "2foo" (String)

I pity the foo who's stuck with static languages like Perl. :-)

Re:I like perl

[Camel Pilot]

Well good example, but look at this way - is harder to understand

@lst = sort { $a $b } @unsorted_lst;

Or the 30 or so lines of code it would take to do the equivalent sort in C?

Re:I like perl

[Erik Hollensbe]

Listen,

Perl makes it easier. That's it.

It's trivial to make any language unreadable - yes folks, even python. As long as there are named variables, comments are optional, and interfaces aren't required to follow a pattern, this will always be the case. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Some great examples: the ioccc, "duff's device" - those are both in C, the most widely used programming language in the world. And if you want to have more fun, look at real world programs that abuse the crap out of cpp - it's not readable in the slightest.

In many ways what separates a good programmer from a bad one is how they use the language, not which language they use. A language is merely a means to an end - in unix, one can write a program to eject your cd-rom in bourne shell without using external programs just as much as they can do it with ioctl() C. That doesn't mean the former is the right or best way to do it, it's just that it's possible. That's not the best example, but a turing-complete language has the ability to do just about anything. This applies to your use of perl (or realistically, any other language) just as easily - there are many ways to do things, that doesn't mean that most of them are the best, readable or "right". Take a look at the OSS world and the 200 some-odd widget libraries - obviously, code reuse is not a problem specific to perl.

Percieved "lack of structure" is almost funny - perl gives you many, many, many ways to give structure to your programs.. More than any other language I have seen. Sometimes an AUTOLOAD routine fits the bill, and sometimes a class fits the bill. Sometimes you just want to write a basic shell script to get the job done. Of course, anyone who's written in bash, visual basic, basic, and assembler knows those languages don't require any structure, either. In the case of the last two there is nothing that /provides/ structure (only deviants and extended versions of these do). I know nothing of matlab and "excel", as padding my resume is not my style.

Perl borrows a lot from list processing concepts and I think this is where a lot of people start to miss the "readability" factor. It did wonders for my ability to manipulate perl to learn Lisp. Nowadays, nothing requires magic variables and CPAN seems to refute your reusability argument rather well - granted, I have another 90k LOC to back me up on that one that's at work here.

I'm more inclined to believe you don't know how to program in perl than to believe you are knowledgable enough to judge it.

Re:I like perl

[soliptic]

That is hardly surprising, because the original PHP was actually written in Perl to be like a kind of subset of Perl.

I can't believe this is at (5, interesting)!

If that many people got fished in by this relatively subtle trolling, it makes me despair for the quality of /. moderation.

PHP was written in C!

Re:I like perl

[chromatic]

PHP was written in C!

Maybe technically true; I don't recall whether Rasmus called PHP/FI PHP. Still, the original project that eventually became modern PHP was a set of Perl scripts. See History of PHP and Related Projects for more information.

Re:I like perl

[rjstanford]

That was the one I started with - changing the routine to sort on the last token was more complex according to the examples I was looking at. And yes, they were worse than similar samples in C. Compare that to looking at examples for custom sort comparators in, say, Java, and I think that you'll see the difference.

Re:I like perl

[Sangloth]

"the ability to read different programming languages is the same as being able to read different human languages. It's a matter of differing grammar, syntax and character notations. Not everyone can grasp chinese or russian or hebrew, but does that make them valueless languages? I didn't think so. You'll especially run into problems if you try and read/write chinese as if it were english, or perl as if it were C."

It's a little tough to say this without seeming dismissive of other cultures, but I'm going to try. Imagine for a second that I could say the Inuit language(I've never even heard it) is crap without implying anything about Eskimos.

Some spoken languages are crap, specifically I'm thinking about English. If you take a quick look here you can see a consistent theme is how English speakers are constantly adopting elements from other languages. This has created an inconsistent language with an extremely large and unnecessary vocabulary, which often give multiple ways to say the same thing.

While spoken Japanese is consistent and easy to learn, old written Japanese (Kanji) is sheer crap.

(Stolen Excerpt)

"Although tens of thousands of kanji have been used in the past, currently only 2000 or so are used in everyday language. Nevertheless, mastering the use of kanji is extremely difficult. Besides the necessity of memorizing large numbers of kanji, individual kanji adopt different meanings and pronunciations depending on their juxtaposition within a sentence or word. In Japan, the number of kanji a person knows and uses reflects his or her education."

Since programming is often expressing mathematical concepts, another example would be Roman Numerals versus Arabic Numerals. It should be obvious that Roman Numerals are valueless in comparisson.

Anyway, choosing a software language isn't like choosing a spoken language, on several levels.

One level is that you can work with a software language in a vacuum. If you like an obscure language, you can use it to write your project successfully. If you use an obscure spoken language, (Latin), you won't be able to function in modern society.

We tend to huddle around the good languages, which makes this topic alittle tougher. Also, I'm sure you've heard to the tool-kit analogy, about how you don't use a screw driver to knock down a nail, and you don't use Ruby for 3d modern video games or FORTRAN for text processing.

That said, some languages are more suited to more tasks, and other languages are not.

You'll notice that Source Forge's Language Distribution is fairly heavily scewed in certain directions.

Out of thousands of projects, not one person used COBOL.

Sangloth
I'd appreciate any comment with a logical basis...it doesn't even have to agree with me.

Re:I like perl

[The Unabageler]

It's been said here before that SF's language distribution is a farce, mainly because most SF.net project never get completed. Back on point, I agree that every language has its place. Perl has a great role in MANY places, and there is quite an extensive perl community (to argue your point that people huddle around good languages - there are many many people huddled around perl. Look at CPAN or perlmonks for example). There's a reason perl is included by default in OS X and was _required_ for freebsd for so long: it is a great language. Right now I make my living writing enterprise perl projects, and have a significantly lower error rate than the java team at my company. My last job, I wrote a credit processing system in perl that handled millions of dollars a day. without error. If you write well in any language, it is maintainable and readable by anyone. Similarly, you can just as easily write terrible code in any language, as parts of the java team are finding out rather painfully. Just like we have monkeys destroying the english language, monkeys have destroyed other languages.

Now if you don't agree with anything else I've said - who can live without duct tape? ;)

Re:I like perl

[Feztaa]

Some spoken languages are crap, specifically I'm thinking about English. If you take a quick look here you can see a consistent theme is how English speakers are constantly adopting elements from other languages. This has created an inconsistent language with an extremely large and unnecessary vocabulary, which often give multiple ways to say the same thing.

So what you're saying is that Perl is a lot like English then?

Re:I like perl

[Eivind Eklund]

I used to feel just like you. I sort of still do - Perl is, in its way, a great tool (I won't go so far as to say a great language).

However, a lot of the features of perl are targetted towards making small programs even smaller. Take for instance my favourite hate-object: Autovivification. Perl fills in whatever you use as a hash reference to be a hash reference, so you don't have to do it yourself. Great for small, short programs where you are bulding data structures. A liability for large programs, where the problems with this (e.g, $stuff = undef; if (exists($stuff->{foo})) makes $stuff == {} - an empty hashref) makes debugging the programs harder.

Or the automatic conversion of numbers to and from strings, requiring that there are different operators for comparing strings (eq, ne, cmp) and numbers (=, !=, <=>). This is great for small, simple programs - removing the need for writing explict conversions is a boon, and automatically being able to mix data coming from a text file and a database is great. However, it gets in the way of writing generic code, and lead to small inconsistencies when one tries to work around it. As an example: Yesterday I had to write code that work with IDs in a sorted order, and had to use regexp checks to find out if it is to do numeric or string compares. That still won't be be stable for sets that mix integers and strings - fortunately, I could just disallow that for the time being.

I still love the power a language like Perl gives me. However, I've found another "language like Perl" where most of the traps are removed, the syntax is cleaned up, the standard library is object oriented and clean, the data structures are orthogonalized[1], and "normal scale code" ends up half[2] the size: Ruby.

I still use Perl for work (for legacy reasons), and I still use Perl for one-liners and throwaway conversion scripts.

But I could easily live without it, and I feel it inappropriate for any new project that end up more than a hundred lines.

Eivind.

[1] For instance, hashes can use any sort of object as a key, not just scalars. Arrays can contain any sort of object. There is no distinction between an array and an arrayref (there is no way to declare anything but a ref), numbers and strings can both be compared with <=>, etc.

[2] The style code I write when doing "clean perl" end up fairly exactly half the size when directly translated to Ruby. Code I write directly in Ruby is generally even more succint, due to using Ruby idioms. See CVSFile-0.2.tar.gz for an example of code I've had this experience with.

Re:I like perl

[The Unabageler]

I believe that the loose typing is one of perl's greatest strengths. To each their own I suppose.

Re:I like perl

[Eivind Eklund]

I've programmed with it (in Perl) and without it (in Ruby); given a language with the other capabilities of Perl (ie, Ruby), the loose typing has turned out to be a liability for large systems in my real life experience.

Note that I work on fairly large Perl projects - several in the 50kloc+ range. For smaller projects, it's a wash, and for really small projects, Perl is excellent :-)

Eivind.

hmm

[TedCheshireAcad]

I usually go to nightclubs to dance and meet women, but I guess this is the Slashdot Way.

Re:hmm

[PorscheDriver]

I go to nightclubs to to dance and get rejected by women, but I guess this is the Slashdot way.

Re:hmm

[Eivind Eklund]

The Slashdot way is going to nightclubs and *thinking* about getting rejected by women. Talking to them so you get rejected is too scary.

Why not?

[arose]

What else would a geek do in a nightclub?

Hmmmm..

[maggeth]

I've found the experiences of dancing and programming to have a great deal in common.

Why not just say, "I hate dancing, but want to get laid eventually, and just hang around nightclubs hoping that some chick is drunk enough to not notice?"

Well, TFA is interesting if you're into music composition in any case. :D

Re:Hmmmm..

[Slashbot Hive-Mind]

We are confused. What is this 'chick' you speak off?

The Slashbot Collective Hivemind

Re:Hmmmm..

[Anarcho-Goth]

We are confused. What is this 'chick' you speak off?

They are the young of the animal Gallus domesticus.
For some reason many in mainstream society covet these baby chickens.

They can be good eating, if you are not a vegetarian, once they are full grown.

Beyond that I do not understand the appeal.

white boy

[smaksly]

play that funky
@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";@d=split//,"\nrekca h xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";sub p{
@p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);pipe"r$p","u$p";++$p;($q *=2) +=$f=!fork;map{$P=$P[$f^ord
($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;map{$p{$_}=~/^[ P.]/&&
close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/&&}%p;$_=$d[$q];sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print

till you die

Re:white boy

[Walterk]

syntax error at - line 4, near "&&}"
Execution of white boy aborted due to compilation errors.

Re:white boy

[simcop2387]

slashdot mangled this perl script, and the geek that i am, figured i'd make some music and fix it:)

@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";@d=split//,"\nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";sub p{
@p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);pipe"r$p","u$p";++$p;($q *=2) +=$f=!fork;map{$P=$P[$f^ord
($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;map{$p{$_}=~/^[ P.]/&&
close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/&&<$_>}%p;$_=$d[$q]; sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print

Re:white boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Missed a few ; and just read line two backwards
Just another Perl / Unix hacker ??? What else...

@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";
@d=split//,"\ nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";

sub p{
@p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);
pipe"r$p","u$p";
++$p ;
($q*=2) +=$f=!fork;
map{$P=$P[$f^ord
($p{$_})&6];
$p{$_ }=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;
p;
p;
p;
p;
map{$ p{$_}=~/^[ P.]/&&
close$_}%p;
wait until$?;
map{/^r/&&}%p;
$_=$d[$q];
slee p rand(2)if/\S/;
print

Re:white boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Execution aborted? What kind of low-budget black hat operation is this! When I learned the trade, persistence was beaten into us... If the guillotine is dull, fetch the rope, or an axe for preference.

Re:white boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Fix this:

use strict;

Variable "%p" is not imported at ./funk.pl line 6.
(Did you mean &p instead?)
Variable "%p" is not imported at ./funk.pl line 7.
(Did you mean &p instead?)
Variable "%p" is not imported at ./funk.pl line 7.
(Did you mean &p instead?)
Global symbol "@P" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 4.
Global symbol "@d" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 4.
Global symbol "%p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$q" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$f" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$P" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "@P" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$f" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 5.
Global symbol "%p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 6.
Global symbol "%p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 6.
Global symbol "$P" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 6.
Global symbol "$P" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 6.
Global symbol "%p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 6.
Global symbol "%p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 6.
Global symbol "%p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 7.
Global symbol "%p" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 7.
Global symbol "@d" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 7.
Global symbol "$q" requires explicit package name at ./funk.pl line 7.
Execution of ./funk.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

Re:white boy

[machine of god]

Don't use strict.

I swear to God...

[jayhawk88]

...the first one of you who makes a "Hack the Planet" joke, I'm kicking your ass (if I ever meet you).

Re:I swear to God...

[Ignignot]

Since you sir, have made the first hack the planet joke, you are now contractually obligated to fulfill your promise because:

1)You have met and are currently co-located with yourself.

You are the first person to make a "Hack the Planet" joke.

Therefore, it is your duty and task to kick your ass forthwith.

Yours truly,
Ignignot

Re:I swear to God...

[Valluvan]

heh..heh.. that's just funny!
where are my mod points when I need them?

You blew it man

[not_a_product_id]

geek gets into a night club with real live women and what does he do? He programs perl. jeez

Re:You blew it man

[Tackhead]

> geek gets into a night club with real live women and what does he do? He programs perl. jeez

Geek gets into nightclub, gets paid to program perl! And all you want to do is talk to the humans. WTF? :)

Re:You blew it man

[Alsee]

Good joke, but on the seirous side this guy *is* up on stage in front of throngs of dancing women. Hot stimulated women, in a room saturated with pheromones to boot. In a sense the DJ is Alpha Male of the club. Alpha Male, ding ding ding!

I'm a geek's geek. I was head of my highschool chess team. I was embarassingly old when I had my first date. I nearly max out the introvert scale on personality tests. But let me tell you from experience, when you wind up in Alpha Male position of a social event none of that matters. The women start approching you. Even a geek can walk out with two women - and wishing to god he had four hands.

:: memory interlude with goofy smile and dreamy sigh ::

Enjoy the laugh, but this guy is a geek hero. Most /.'rs would give their right neocortex to be him at the end of the night.

-

Re:You blew it man

[bladesjester]

I can say you're right about the DJ thing. Been there, done that, and I'm not giving details past saying that I wasn't bored or alone. *wicked laugh*

But I also get that sort of thing because of the swordfighting and when I used to do blacksmithing (yes, I'm a strange geek).

Re:You blew it man

[lcsjk]

What is this date thing you refer to?

Re:You blew it man

[Feanturi]

You're supposed to give her a PEARL necklace.

Re:You blew it man

[shplorb]

he should be in the loo giving perl to the ladies

Re:You blew it man

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he has some scripts on disc which he can let run themselves if he finds he needs to do something else.

Alex performs live on stage to program his music ?

[Gopal.V]

> Alex programmes live on stage to perform his music

Did he actually mean , "Alex performs live on stage to program his music" or did he mean the other way around ?

Music and programming

[ryg0r]

IAAMP (am a music producer) and I find that if you want to perform really well at a nite club to get the crowd rocking, you give them what they want - its as simple as that. Supply and demand.

Think of the dance floor as a high maintenance lover. When you bring on the goods, you'll be rewarded well.

Now back to the subject. I can understand that you can use perl to create some interesting musical results. But instead of music being written by a persons creativity, its now a result of a script.

I dunno, I'm undecided on the issue, but it seems like a cop-out, rather than an advancement in the way the musicians write/create tunes.

The best way to perform for your lover is with V1@GrA - used by DJ's all around the globe.

Re:Music and programming

[dave420]

I'm not having a go here, but by your logic the only real musicians are those who make music using only their own bodies: to you, Jimi Hendrix was only a singer - his guitar skill was meaningless as it was the guitar that made the noise, not Jimi. Miles Davis was a talentless hack and The Beatles were a mediocre a capella band ;)

True, the guy is coding the software that makes the music, but if he didn't code it exactly the way he did, the music would be substantially different. The same way a musician has to play the guitar exactly the way they did making the song to faithfully reproduce it.

I think it's far from a cop-out, but a progression of how we use technology to make music. First, it was musical machines, now it's musical computers. The two constants - people and music.

Re:Music and programming

[ryg0r]

See once again I am quite divided in the issue.

On one hand, you can use this idea of the scripts creating wierd and wonderful melodies, but depending on the situation it may or may not work.

I would agree with you that is is far from a cop-out on the basis of that it can be a legitmate technique to derive vastly different riffs and themes.

For me, this is like trying to get a computer to paint. Can we create a program so powerful that is becomes creative?

Re:Music and programming

[zoeblade]

IAAMP (am a music producer) and I find that if you want to perform really well at a nite club to get the crowd rocking, you give them what they want - its as simple as that. Supply and demand.

Don't people want to actually see the person on stage actually doing something live though? Music performed by computers sounds all well and good, but watching a computer do something isn't very interesting. Bring on the modulars :)

(Shameless plug for my free music in Ogg Vorbis format)

Re:Music and programming

[vidarh]

It is now the result of a script that is the result of a persons creativity. What difference does it make? What matters is the result, and the result will still depend on the composers ability to manipulate the music, whether that is done by playing directly on an instrument or modifying a program to change the way the program plays the instruments.

Besides composition has always been highly rule based, and even classics like Mozart toyed with generative music. There's a lot of music out there that is clearly composed in ways that closely resemble many of the methods used by generative music systems today. Beethovens "Ecossaisen" for instance closely follow the structure of a Cantor fractal. Composing music IS about combining patterns much more than about combining individual notes.

This page is a good overview of the fractal nature of composition.

I'd agree with you that using a computer for generating the music for a live performance would be a cop out if the computer was programmed with the full score from the start, instead of being used as an instrument that allows automation of repetitive elements.

Personally I see very little value in live performances of the actual music if the music is intended to just follow a score - what makes a live performance interesting to me is what goes into the presentation and/or any improvisation, not that someone demonstrates that they are capable of recreating the same tunes over and over in realtime.

Re:Music and programming

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't people want to actually see the person on stage actually doing something live though?

I heard at 90% of rock shows, the guitar is only plugged in and turned on during the part where the roady tunes it up.

Re:Music and programming

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound more like a used car salesman than a producer... or marketing people...

Re:Music and programming

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're underestimating the human element in this endeavor. I take the stance that computer generated music may be occasionally interesting, but is generally pointless and annoying. What this guy's doing is NOT random (though he may throw in some chaotic elements), and it's not computer generated in the sense that the machine is responsible for creating all elements of the music.

Also, if you look at some of his code, for example the first bit showing how to make a bassline using 'beep', it's clear that he is very much in control of the musical content. Again, he may choose to let the code modify itself for some surprises later on.

I guess the core of what I want to say is that what he's doing is only slightly different than someone using a software synthesizer: the difference is he's working at a lower level, giving him arguably more flexibility. To use your paint analogy, it's not like having a computer paint; it's like using Logo to paint as opposed to Paintbrush: same operations, more abstract control.

It's like Reason without the pretty instrument rack. I know I'm interested in looking into Supercollider and OSC now - checked out CSound a while ago, but it seemed like it would take an incredible amount of time and effort to make anything worthwhile.

filoeleven@work

Re:Music and programming

[Paleomacus]

I think a better question might be:
Is he in control(at a level relative to, for instance, a guitarist/vocalist) of the sound he makes?

If so I'd claim that this approach to music is not a 'cop-out' and that he is as much of an artist/musician as any other.

Disclaimer: I am not a musician and have not read the article; remember -- this is /.!

Re:Music and programming

[CoolGopher]

But instead of music being written by a persons creativity, its now a result of a script.

Oh, you mean like all of Britney's stuff?

(Oh I know, my karma will burn for this one...)

Personally I reckon this sounds way cool - and what the poster above seems to not realise, is that the scripts are constantly updated/written by a person (something that I don't think can be said of Brit-doh, there I go again). Sounds like a really cool (geek) way of DJ'ing!

Re:hmm... Perl in a **nightclub**

[hype7]

perl in a nightclub?

I do not think that word means what you think it means...

-- james

One Hit Too Many of Ecstasy

[Black-Man]

The guy is a DJ... instead of spinning CD's or albums, he's triggering sound files via Perl.

He needs to lay off the ecstasy.

Re:One Hit Too Many of Ecstasy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whoa man...I can see meaning in Perl code!" Yup, anyone who uses Perl for that is tripping his balls off.

Re:One Hit Too Many of Ecstasy

[zimpenfish]

RTFA! He's not a DJ. He's performing music by writing code (live on stage) that gets turned into music. Sheesh.

Re:One Hit Too Many of Ecstasy

[AGMW]

He's not a DJ. He's performing music by writing code (live on stage) that gets turned into music. Sheesh.

I almost agree with you there if you are thinking about some "Dave-Double-Decks" wedding DJ, but if you are talking about some of the (not so) new breed of superstar DJ's who mix tunes and beats to improve on originals and move into live mixing that is more akin to sampling, then I would have to go blow my whistle with the "disagree" crowd.

Re:One Hit Too Many of Ecstasy

[zimpenfish]

There are no tunes until he starts programming, only silence. There's nothing for him to mix, beatmatch, sample, fold, spindle, or mutilate. The music comes solely from the code he writes there and then. RTFA and you'll see what he does is *nothing* like a DJ.

Re:One Hit Too Many of Ecstasy

[drewzhrodague]

Oh, no, it's not performed on traditional instruments so it must be garbage.

Gimme a break, aren't we deeply seated in "the future"? I figure, everything has evolved due to tech, especially music. These guys have made some rather interesting displays with LEDs. I've been to their parties, and some of the music that I've seen there is stuff you don't see in a nightclub -- video scratching, accelerometers coupled to synths and other gadgetry, stuff I've never seen before or heard of, and only just kinda wondered about. Exploring these different technologies is neat, and when it works-out right, it can really be amazing. Of course, I'm into echoed beeping with reverb, but not all electronic music is bleep.

more like

[schmu_20mol]

#!/usr/bin/perl print "YMCA\n";

Re:more like

[generalbeard]

Yeah smells gay all the way. This is the most stupidest thing I've ever heard/read of. Ohh my, lets do something 'real' crazy and, y'know, go to a dancebar/nightclub and program some perl. bahh. baugh.

Obligatory Swordfish Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

What better place than a nightclub to crack 1024 bit encryption at gunpoint while having a 60-second sexual relation (depending on the defintion of "is" and "sex") with a beautiful woman.

Re:Obligatory Swordfish Reference

[boy_afraid]

I was about to say something in reference to Swordfish, but you beat me to the punch.

G-r-o-a-n.

Just goes to show

[wackysootroom]

You can take the geek out of the nightclub, but you can't take the nightclub out of the geek.

Re:Just goes to show

[Anonymous Coward]

with all due respect, fuck you and your free ipods.

Re:Just goes to show

[Anonymous Coward]

Why has this been modded troll? Off topic perhaps but not troll - the grandparent poster is advertising an obvious pyramid scheme. Something that's illegal in many countries including the US.

Re:Just goes to show

[duggy_92127]

I prefer: You can lead a geek to a nightclub, but you can't make him get a life.

Doug

Re:Just goes to show

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain to us where it's illegal.

It's illegal to buy your way into a pyramid and have part of the cash go to the top, but the pyramid itself is not illegal. Nobody at the top is making any more than others in the pyramid. (no, free ipods is not at the 'top' since they don't make any residual income from the sales)

The first thing I'd do is look at the company behind free ipods at the BBB. What's the BBB record of free ipods?

Not everyone will get their free ipod and not everyone will complete the requirements to get one, but how often does a "free" promotional offer last? Not forever, that's for sure.

Re:Just goes to show

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain to us where it's illegal.

Everywhere.

Nobody at the top is making any more than others in the pyramid.

Nice theory. Unfortunately it only works if you have infinite number of persons to recruit into the pyramid. In the real life, things won't work quite that way, pyramid runs out of folks to scam, lower levels get screwed while the top people who initiated the scam get away rich.

Drinkin' and Codin'

[subrosas]

Not sure about hacking Perl in nightclubs, but I did drink a fifth of gin while trying to debug a friend's Perl script.
Kind of like a Dantean descent into hell it was...

Re:Drinkin' and Codin'

[Anonymous Coward]

On a serious note.. smoking weed really does help me code.. I can sit here for several hours hacking away at PHP scripts and by the time I've sobered up I've written a huge mass of almost error-free code, normally written for creative ideas that have come to me whilst I've been baked.

Of course, that's not always the case.. Sometimes I just seem to sit here staringly blankly at the pretty layout of my website.. heh. Depends on your mood I guess.

I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[Greenisus]

I am a software developer by day, and DJ at a night club by night. The idea of programming live is really cool to me, but when I'm DJing with my computer, I'm scared to run anything other than the DJ software, because I can't have ANY lag. I do, however, write software at home to help my DJ gigs.

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[jasonmicron]

What is "DJ" software exactly? I've been spinning for years now and I have no clue what "DJ" software is. Do you mean SoundForge or CoolEdit Pro or Wavelab? Ehh, back to the topic...

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[Greenisus]

I occasionally use DJ-1800, which emulates multple CD players (I just got it, still testing the demo version before I buy it. The only extra feature I want is a brake, which MegaSeg has). There's also PCDJ, but I'm a Mac guy, so I don't mess with it much. I've even used iTunes and GarageBand. I also use "real" DJ gear, like turntables and CD players, but I'm an outcast (not to be confused with OutKast) among DJs I know because I actually prefer to use the computer.

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[DiscoDave_25]

IIADJ (and prefer to use 12" vinyl) but I have to point out why you are 'outcast'. DJing isn't playing music. That's why there are thousands of DJs and very few make it. You are a showman. If a crowd just wanted music then mix CDs or the computerised 'DJs' that automatically mix music would be more popular (and cheaper) than the uber-Djs. They're not. If you use vinyl (or to a lesser extent CDs) the crowd see's what you are doing and you can trick around to work this as much as you want. If you're staring at a monitor then you can't. Whilst I'm sure it's easier to use it's not what people expect to see (in a bad way) and it turns them off. We had a guy use his laptop to mix from with a USB control panel. He could get great effects out of it and porbably do more to the tunes that I could with just vinyl but he lasted 2 weeks. Why? He didn't engage the crowd and wasn't popular despite the fact his mixing and music selection were superb. Not meaning to flame but until mixing using a computer has the same 'flair' as the more traditional methods it will be relegated to technophile (not techno) clubs and never be mainstream.

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[karnal]

Nice to see that your buggy whips will survive the next 100 years....

Even if it takes making equipment to make it appear that you're scratching, I'm sure that everyone can see the benefit to using a 2.5" hdd to store all the music, rather than milk crates of 12" vinyl...

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[Medieval]

Traktor DJ Studio is pretty nice, especially if you have one of the hardware interfaces for it, but nothing compares to spinning 12" records.

DJ Medieval

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[Anonymous Coward]

Traktor

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[DocTee]

everyone can see the advantage but they also think its cheating.

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[ilikejam]

Aaaaaargh! Get a pair of Technics 1210s. NOW. Anyone playing compressed music through anything that even resembles a large sound system should be shot (I imagine you'll be playing MP3s thought your 'DJ' computer). CD decks are acceptable, but ONLY if you can't get that particular track on vinyl.
Actually, Stanton's Final Scratch is preferable in this situation. (Final Scratch uses a custom Linux install on a laptop, so that should tickle the fancy of the Slashdot crowd too).
My personal preference is a pair of 1210 Mk5s and a DJM600.

I've had my ears abused by DJs using sub-standard digital equipment on sound rigs too many times. Don't do it kids.

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[Anonymous Coward]

hi,

you should take a look at linux and jackd and the possibilities of setting RT priveleges for your audio processes.. i can compile a kernel and still happily supercollide along with 128 frames of latency :) [ca. 2.7ms]

keywords to look for:

jackd
realtime lsm
voluntary preemption
linux

have fun :)

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[Greenisus]

I have a pair, and use them. I just like the computer. I use lossless codecs for stuff, and if it is compressed, I test it thoroughly before I pull it out in public. If it won't sound good on the sound system, I don't play it.
But, seriously, I've been looking at the replies to my original post, and it further solidifies my belief that most DJs are too concerned with the technical side and not enough with the programming (choosing material) side.
When I first started bringing a laptop, I thought it might bother people and they would not be as impressed with my performance. It turns out quite the opposite was true. Several people were impressed that I could do it off a computer, and they were blown away with how much music I could store on a firewire hard drive. And once I started using it, my show got better. I could get to the "perfect song" instantly, instead of having to do a binary search in my head through crates and boxes. You can have your head down looking through your records, or you can be watching the crowd and figuring out what they're going to dance to next. I choose the latter, even though it's treason.

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[ilikejam]

Cool.
That's all right then. Just out of interest, what sort of stuff do you play?

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[crabpeople]

two words:

dual amds

you'll never have mp3s lag again.
i can run two games and still have my mp3s playing.

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[Greenisus]

The club I'm at has multiple dance floors, so they're all different. One floor is playing all techno (mostly house) and rap, so I try to keep a different flavor. I play almost any genre. Funk, disco, soul, hip hop (but not this freek-a-leek type stuff), a little bit of rock, 80's pop, very small dose of modern pop. In fact, all I know I haven't played is country or classical. It doesn't sound like your typical club set, but I'm going for a different mood. All in all, it's really cool, and extremely fun. Most of all, it just depends on what my crowd looks like, and it's really different every time.

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[ilikejam]

I see.
If it was house you were playing I would have said to go here and listen to my mix.
But you don't, so I won't.
And yet I just did.

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[Greenisus]

I still play house, from time to time. I just go easy on it. I listened to your mix, and I really like it! A bunch of drunk people in Memphis might be hearing it this weekend. While we're at showing off music, check out my gangsta rap song. I was just goofing off, but it's still fun to me.

Re:I Do Both, But Not Simultaneously

[ilikejam]

Outstanding.

Perl's a Singer

[mo^]

She Stands up when she plays the Piano... In a night club...

Yah, Perl, night club.... Elkie did it first!

There are better languages for this, like ChucK

[Trepidity]

ChucK is a "concurrent, on-the-fly audio programming language", designed from the ground up precisely for this application: live programming of generative music.

Re:There are better languages for this, like ChucK

[dTaylorSingletary]

Thanks for mentioning ChucK -- it is obviously the shit! I've been looking for something cross-platform like SuperCollider for a long time.

Can't wait to waste a few hours trying this out.

Re:There are better languages for this, like ChucK

[zoeblade]

...and if you want to write regular, non-live electronic music, try the language Csound.

I wonder what causes more brain damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nightclub perl hacking or ecstasy dropping. Probably a wash.

Unbelievable

[Lovedumplingx]

What no one has touched on is that coding, hard in and of itself, and writing music on the fly, also very hard, and doing it live leaves no margin of error.
What if he makes a keystroke error? Wouldn't that have the possibility of destroying his whole set?
This is just too incredible for words.

Re:Unbelievable

[yaxu]

If I may comment as the author of the article... It's not that dangerous, to be honest. I make a change, then press ctrl-x, which re-interprets the code into a dummy 'package.' If that doesn't cause compile-time errors, then it interprets the code into the live 'package.' So all I have to worry about is run-time errors, which are pretty rare. As I'm generally running a lot of scripts at the same time, it doesn't matter if one of them drops out or goes mental. In fact, it usually sounds good. I just have to fix it, then break it again, then fix it again to make it sound intentional!

Re:Unbelievable

[Anonymous Coward]

eeh, maybe his music's shit?

Re:Unbelievable

[Addy-Toronto]

What is unbelievable, is that the computer can come up with something good. Good music takes talent and an inherent understanding of what is good. If computers could decide what's good, than AI would be no sweat, and musicians would be out of a job.

Patterns

[UncleBiggims]

A good friend of mine often compares programming to music. He studied jazz improvistion at the college level and is now a programmer... so I feel like he has a good insight into this sort of thing. One quote that really made sense to me was, "Traditional jazz improvisation is all about trying to fit creative and spontaneous music composition on top of somewhat predictable chord progressions."

This is what many programmers try to do... develop creative solutions using predictable software design patterns. I guess Alex Mclean has found a way to be creative AND spontaneous with his coding.

Re:Patterns

[Anonymous Coward]

This couldn't be more wrong. Code done properly is never spontaneous. It is planned, it is architected, it is designed.

True jazz is rarely performed the same way twice. There are chord substitutions, tempo changes, changes in dynamics, phrasing, and note selection. I think your buddy is "jazz schooled", but only educated in jazz, he's NOT a jazzer.

Unfortunately, coders see beauty in efficiency. Music is not about efficiency, it is about expression. Can you write a Perl script to generate music that captures the feeling of fear? Or lust? Or trepidation? Or loneliness? Can this be done without wondering if the algorithm is 'wrong'? Or if the script 'is a processing hog'?

Re:Patterns

[AGMW]

Can you write a Perl script to generate music that captures the feeling of fear? Or lust? Or trepidation? Or loneliness?

OK, its late, the Reactor is about to go critical, and you have a couple of minutes to find the fault.
You discover its in some Perl code - There's the trepidation for you.
... and you didn't write it - enough with the fear already!

Re:Patterns

[CmdrGravy]

"Can you write a Perl script to generate music that captures the feeling of fear? Or lust? Or trepidation? Or loneliness?"

I would imagine you have an equal chance of doing that coding it in Perl as you would have writing a score for an Orchestra or plucking the strings of an electric guitar. All those are methods of making music but in the end it's only the music which counts.

Re:Patterns

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because jazz sucks. He was right to not become a true jazzer.

Re:Patterns

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously doubt that. Writing a score for orchestra is similar to writing code for music, but ultimately, it's the emotions of the performers that are behind the phrasing of the notes that makes the music. The Perl script might make "sound", but without emotions behind it, it could hardly be called music.

Re:Patterns

[CmdrGravy]

So you don't think any kind of electronic music is proper music ?

Re:Patterns

[Anonymous Coward]

I find programming similar to taking a shit: it's best to keep it as clean as possible on the way out so you don't have to spend much time wiping your mess up later.

I think anything could be compared to programming. :)

Re:Patterns

[Anonymous Coward]

yes http://malfunction.org/lonely/

Re:Patterns

[Knos]

Who let the music bigots enter the building?

"Structured" Perl

[notthepainter]

I was hired to write a program to parse and modify some Postscript files. Perl was the obvious choice. So I learned Perl for the job, wrote the script, etc...

As you may know, Perl can be very unreadable and I don't write unreadable code. It was all broken down into functions etc.., all fully commented. Probably slow, but we didn't care, it was maintainable.

So years pass, a friend is learning Perl so I show it to her. Her first comment was, "That doesn't look like the Perl the guys write at work!"

Well, I thought it was funny...

Programming and Dancing

[MikeMacK]

I've found the experiences of dancing and programming to have a great deal in common.

Yeah me too, I don't always know what I'm doing but I have a great deal of fun doing it.

The first rule of Nightclub

[grasshoppa]

1) You do not talk about nightclub :)

Re:The first rule of Nightclub

[Ohreally_factor]

If this is your first night at nightclub, you have to night.

Wait, that doesn't make any sense.

Nightclub hacking indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

While recently visiting Vancouver, a dance club wanted to image my entire driver's license!

They wanted me to hold my license up to a webcam. The first night, I used my finger to cover the important info. The second night, this was detected and the woman tried to snatch it out of my hand.. I declined to allow this potential privacy invasion and left the club (getting my money back).

Mind you, I am a 30 something, so there is no question regarding my age to get in the club. Further, there was no scrutiny applied to my ID. It was a US ID and could have easily been a total fake.

Yeah, I know this wasn't what the story was about.

Re:Nightclub hacking indeed

[SlashN]

The first thing they usually do is take blood samples, and hair folicles and then clone you(The DJ programmer in the center of the night club does all that by the way). After that they try and steal your ID and then kill you off after they find out where you live. Good thing you got out of there when you did. You were in the destructor phase.

Re:Nightclub hacking indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, they were freakin' Canadians, eh?

No telling what they'd do with my US driver's license. Probably come over here to buy beer after 8PM or some other hideous thing they aren't allowed to do up there..

Mirror

[frumin]

http://www.perl.com.nyud.net:8090/pub/a/2004/08/31 /livecode.html

Re:Oh my GOD

[Ignignot]

What next I wonder? Masturbating in time to the squeals that a modem makes?

What I do with myself in my own spare time is my business!

er hold on, getting a fax! =D

Re:Alex performs live on stage to program his musi

[zimpenfish]

He writes code, live on stage, within an existing framework which interprets the code as he types it and that makes the music.

So he performs his music by programming it live on stage. If that helps.

Note...

[electric_mind]

...that the article is all about the modules you can use to generate sounds from Perl (which isn't clear if you don't read it - the Nightclub + Perl Programming idea is way overemphazised in the original post...)

Alex Giving a Talk in London a Week Today

[twoshortplanks]

Alex will be giving the London Perl Mongers a talk (and live demo) on his work in the evening of Thursday 9th September in central London. It's our normal technical meeting and alongside Alex, we'll be featuring talks by Simon Cozens (the current perl.com editor), Tom Husins, and I'll be talking about Perl Testing project.

I'm just working thought the details of the venue now and I'll post a follow up to this thread once I've sorted them out. As always, we're pleased to welcome new faces. Oh, and if anyone wants, they can pop along to the pub for our monthly social tonight.

Slashdot, your local friendly pub invite list.

uhh...

[Ieshan]

...dance? ...Meet women?

I mean, a nightclub is an essentially dark room with flashing lights and some music where you're free to go dance with girls anonymously.

It's all a self-esteem thing. Just go dance. You'll enjoy it.

Re:uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly

i am getting tired of this stereotype of geeks not getting girls. its kind of funny here and there. but now its the standard response about any live intereaction with people.

if some of these people are not talking, dancing, or going home with a girl you just met at some point in your life, you are missing out.

confidence.

Re:uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dancing alone is NOT enjoyable, just because girls don't run away from you, does not mean it holds for everyone.

Re:Oh my GOD

[PatrickThomson]

what, 56,000 times a second?

slashdoted

[coolguy81]

Slashdot working it's magic...

google cache

Re:Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect.

cogsci.princeton.edu -
Program - a sequence of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute;

The text file itself is only a script. The script + interpreter is a full program (also worth nothing that several people have whipped up programs that allows you to compile Perl scripts in to native binaries)

Perl code is hard to re-use, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess I'm a genius for using modules from CPAN, and I didn't even know it.

Re:hmm... Perl in a **nightclub**

[AGMW]

perl in a nightclub?

I'm so old that in my world Perl's a singer, and as I recall, she stands up when she plays the piano.

Waitaminnit...

[nanojath]

Alex programmes live on stage

Programmes? Programmes? By god I smell a limey in our midst! Get 'im!

Re:Waitaminnit...

[meringuoid]

On TV, I watch programmes; at a football match, I might buy a programme. But on a computer, I run programs.

Similarly, my back would be in great pain were I to slip a disc, but in /etc/fstab I mount disks.

I'm happy enough to use the American spelling for computer jargon; that usage evolved in America, and so the older British spellings do not necessarily hold.

Re:Waitaminnit...

[TwistedSquare]

Indeed, I would not write a "computer programme". As for disc/disk - it was my belief that disc was for any round object (e.g. compact disc), but computer hard drives were hard disks. BTW, you can tell you program graphics too much if you start trying to use "color" everywhere, the US spelling being prevalent in all programming.

Re:Alex performs live on stage to program his musi

[AGMW]

He writes code, live on stage, within an existing framework which interprets the code as he types it and that makes the music.

So he presses keys in various combinations and the program interprets this as notes or chords, the combined whole being called music (depending on how drunk/musical you are)?
Hmmmm. Isn't that rather what a piano does?

Bouncers let geeks into nightclubs nowadays?

[Jakhel]

my how the times have changed

Me too

[TheCrunch]

I've been doing this for ages. I tried Techno but my code usually generates Blues.

Well.. bluescreens.

sorry.

Re:Me too

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Billy!!! Get him! Fast! Before the bodyguards cover him!

On second thought we should wait a sec so he gets more money in his account, before MS stocks fall because we kiddnap him instead of beating to death !!!
MUHAHA!

This has been done before...

[Anonymous Coward]

The system... is down...

Re:Alex performs live on stage to program his musi

[andrew_0812]

No, if you would bother to RTFA, you would see that he is has written a multi-threadded text editor for writing perl. One thread is the editor, the other thread runs the code constantly. He writes perl code to generate musical patters. He has a system set up so that he can have multiple programmers working at the same time and it will all be in sync, you can even change the temp and all programs will sync up.

I don't know about programming on stage, but the concept of synthesizing music in perl is quite interesting.

Full Details

[twoshortplanks]

Full details have now been finalised. We're meeting at BUPA House near Holborn.

Find out more (including how to sign up so you can attend) from the message I posted to the London.pm mailing list.

See you there (if not in the pub tonight).

and now, the deluge of "hard coded" jokes

[192939495969798999]

Geek DJ meets girl, but she's not like the dance floor... Geek DJ's not used to prolonged "hard coding" ha ha ha, et al.

Use CSOUND

[adam872]

Real men use CSOUND for "programmed music" :)

Seriously, csound is designed as a programming language for music and is phenominally powerful and can be used in real time. If I were hacking code for music onstage, that is what I would use. Having said that, I'd rather use my guitar or synth(s) as they are the ultimate in "live composition" instruments...

Re:Use CSOUND

[bfree]

From the article:

Software synthesizers are now commonplace and reliable, thanks to the increasing speed of computers and improving latency times of operating systems including the Linux kernel. Most music software is still controllable by MIDI, but for a faster and more modern alternative, have a look at Open Sound Control (OSC).

OSC is an open network protocol for music, and is well supported by the best free software music applications including pure-data, SuperCollider and CSound.

So in fact he could be using CSound when the mood takes him!

Re:Use CSOUND

[adam872]

Didn't see that bit. Thanks for pointing it out.

Sorry, no fly

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but whatever Geeks do to make themselves SEEM cool, it just isn't. So give it up. Learn to use real equipment and musical instruments.

Sheesh

Lost me at the first sentence

[DonkPunch]

"I've found the experiences of dancing and programming to have a great deal in common."

Then either your dancing or your programming needs some serious help.

Re:Lost me at the first sentence

[Excen]

I was thinking of the "Elaine Dance-Floor Seizure" from Seinfeld when I heard that statement.

So let's hear it...

[slim]

Any chance of an MP3 link?
(maybe later when the risk of /. effect subsides?)

Soundshots?

[chmod u s]

The one thing I was interested the article is missing. If I have to install all those frigging modules and services and tweak on the OSC stuff to get it working I want to know there is a payoff somewhere and not just some oddly tempo'd mario bros music.

Anybody want to share mp3 samples?

Bah!

[BarryNorton]

Imagine what one could do with a real language... http://haskell.org/libraries/#music

INAPH and have don't have MIDI

[Kalak]

INAPH, but I'm curious to experience the music. Since I live in BFE, I'm not likely to go to any perl hacking nightclubs (plus, married with 2 kinds, who am I kidding, I'm not going to any nightclubs).

I want to hear the music!

Talking about audio w/o at least a sample is like talking code w/o a Hello World at least. So some perl hacker out there want to take his code snippets and to the right thing and put a MIDI file up somewhere for us to listen to? mp3?

Don't make me get curious enough to dive into Perl for fun. I do too much coding at work, and I don't want to be a coder at home.

Re:INAPH and have don't have MIDI

[jlapier]

(plus, married with 2 kinds, who am I kidding, I'm not going to any nightclubs).

Only 2 kinds eh? Your lucky. My GF is at least 8 different kinds through the course of a month....

PS - I agree - where are the audio samples?

Re:s You are not logged in. You can log in now usi

[SlashN]

When you keep seeing that, then you know you must be a trance hacking computer programmer. Because you're never bothered by repetitive instantiated, polymorphated, encapsulated iterations.

Nerds ahead of their time...

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

So, live programming of music...

That must have been what Lewis was doing on that TRS-80 at the end of Revenge of the Nerds, in the talent contest, as he was working the keys so fast.

Freebird

[Vinnie_333]

Hack Freebird!!!

Re:Oh my GOD

[BigBadBus]

As another question, does this guy have acne, greasy black hair, speak with a nasal twang, wear a jumper with holes in, an anorak and 10 year old trainers? I'll be he does in this nerdy pursuit.

Alex has been doing this for years

[babbage]

Alex McLean and Ade Ward have been performing live Perl music under the name Slub for several years now. Quoting from Alex's website:

Behind the scenes, slub is a fairly idealistic project. We make music using entirely self-written software. Every aspect of slub composition and synthesis comes from our fingers. Many interoperating pieces of software work together to generate the music live, using a handmade client/server protocol. The software sampler/synth is written in C (by Ade), the server and synch code is in Perl (by me) and a whole slew of composition scripts and apps are written in Perl and RealBasic. The whole system is distributed across Ade's powerbook and my debian Linux laptop (we stopped short of writing our own operating system).

Poke around and you can probably find MP3s of their music -- it's interesting stuff.

In addition, the two of them have written some papers & software on the programmatic generation of art, whether that be music, graphic arts, software itself, etc:

• Live Algorithm Programming and a Temporary Organisation for its Promotion - A. McLean, A. Ward, et al
• /usr/bin/bash as a performative tool - A. McLean (scroll down a bit)
• Hacking Sound in Context - A. McLean
• How I Drew One Of My Pictures - A. Ward
• The Authorship of Generative Art - A. Ward
• Autoshop, a "Photoshop Parody" - A. Ward
• Auto-Illustrator, an "Illustrator Parody" - A. Ward

Much more of Ade's software is available from Signwave.co.uk.

Re:Alex has been doing this for years

[Xepo]

I might be wrong, but after a cursory glance at 'slub', what the guy in this article is doing is quite a bit different.

In Slub, it appears that they code the scripts beforehand, then decide while they're there when to play them, etc. The guy in this article is actually writing the scripts while on stage. I could definitely see myself doing the former, but the latter....wow, I mean, it's a lot more like improving (as mentioned in the article), because if something you do doesn't sound right, the whole audience hears it....if you've written everything beforehand, you *know* what it sounds like.

Programmatically generating music is nothing new (I'm pretty sure stuff was out in the 80s for it), but actually doing the programming while on stage is. At least, I think so.

Re:Alex has been doing this for years

[Queuetue]

Alex, the guy who wrote the article is actually Yaxu, one of the two members of slub.

Ohhhmygod

[Linker3000]

That guy needs to get out more...er..stay in more...er never mind.

INSIGHTFUL ?!?

[LordPixie]

Claiming that a coding DJ is high on drugs gets you modded INSIGHTFUL.

God damnit. I love Slashdot.


--LordPixie

Strong Bad's "techno" song...

[Otto]

When reading this article, did anybody else get the song from the Strong Bad "Techno" email start playing in their head? Because when he starts talking about "programming" a song live, that is how I imagine it must sound like. :)

Re:Perl

[meringuoid]

Program - a sequence of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute;

The text file itself is only a script. The script + interpreter is a full program.

Surely by that definition, script + interpreter + kernel is a full program? You can't boot the interpreter direct, unless you're running a BBC Micro or something... It's GNU/Linux, not just GNU ;-)

Dancin' Wu-Li Hackers

[kevmit]

From the parent article:

"I've found the experiences of dancing and programming to have a great deal in common...for example in a debugger, it does seem to be dancing around its loops and conditions -- moving in patterns through time."

...and white men wonder why they can't dance.
IANADancer, in fact I'd pretty much distributed all my attribute points for this character before I realized there was a category labeled "Rhythm and Motor Skills", but it seems to me that most really great Dancers are all very right-brained types. They "feel" and instinctively react to the music in a way that is as incomprehensible to me as 370 Assembler might be to them. Coders and Hackers (MY people) in contrast seem to be mostly left-brained as a rule. We instinctively see patterns in code where others might just see spaghetti. Different strokes for different folks, I guess, but in response to Crosby, Stills, & Nash...

"Oh when you were young, did you question all the answers?" Yes.

"Did you envy all the dancers who had all the nerve?" Yes...YES! I admit it! OK?

So has he Burned Chrome yet?

[aristus]

I hear she has some real killer ice around her club.

Re:hmm... Perl in a **nightclub**

[tonywong]

Just an FYI,

Nightclub in North America == discotheque

Nightclub in Europe == Nudie bar

Found out the 'hard' way in Austria.

Bash.org Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

johnsmith: Ill sit at bars and write perl on my napkin until girls are so thick around me I cant move my body

Error in article

[djfray]

The article says that all modern musicians make their music on the computer. Certainly, this is true to a certain degree for electronic musicians(techno and the like), though I dabble in this and I often find myself sitting at my Grand Piano when working on a riff. Computers play a large part in recording of modern music, but I think you'll find that physical instruments still play an enormous role in it.

Re:Error in article

[yaxu]

Err... No, it doesn't, it says "modern-day music is often composed not at a piano but at a computer."

"music is often composed", does not mean "all music is composed".

Please be more careful.

Re:Error in article

[djfray]

Good point. Yet they are still being deceptive. I would be willing to bet that modern day music is more often composed at a piano than a computer, or both, or perhaps a guitar, but you get the point I'm sure, and it's trivial to get caught in semantics. The point that is inferred from the author's statement is most likely to be that more modern music is composed on a computer than at a traditional instrument, or by hand, and this isn't true. The author doesn't go out of his way to mention that musicians very often if not more often than at computers, will use pianos, etc... to compose their music.

Re:Error in article

[yaxu]

Firstly, I am the author of the article.
Secondly, the article is about using computers to make music so no, I don't go out of my way to talk about how pianos are used to make music.

Re:Error in article

[djfray]

First, perhaps if you read what I wrote, you would know what I was saying. And that is what the inferred point is, not the point that you did or didn't try to make. Unfortunately, you can't always control what your readers think. Second, being the author of your piece doesn't invalidate my opinion, or what I've said. My experience in the area of making electronic music leads me to one of the ideas I presented, which is that I believe that electronic musicians utilize physical instruments a lot more than you believe. You said yourself that often times a musician will use a computer and not a piano. I am curious as to where you get this information. It also might be an interesting fact for you, that most all computer synths have piano programs integrated into them. But I'm done I guess.

Re:Error in article

[yaxu]

I agree with much of what you say. However, originally you said "The article says that all modern musicians make their music on the computer." The article doesn't say that, it being a ridiculous and obviously untrue statement. While you're free to infer whatever you like into my article I ask that you at least quote it correctly.

Re:Error in article

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you see any quote signs? And I conceded that I made a mistake. I would like to ask that you at least read what I say.

coding on stage

[Anonymous Coward]

I wrote code on stage in xlisp and a midi control layer I wrote myself back 'around 87. This was on an amiga 1000. I was actually wearing a guitar when I called medium level functions to generate sound, which I then played over.
(The project was called masked men and purveyed a mix of both experimental and pop/dance oriented music)

I thought at the time I might have been the only person to have written code/lisp code, but I posted about it on venerable online system "the well" when I joined in 1990 and somebody said they'd written lisp on stage in the 70s.
Maybe with a guitar strapped on. heh.

The music had to work around garbage collection, which I forced at the end of phrases.

Re:coding on stage

[yaxu]

I'd love to hear more about this project - we're collecting historical references for live coding. Please contact me at alex ~at~ slab.org .

Re:hmm... Perl in a **nightclub**

[TwistedSquare]

Nightclub in UK == discotheque as well

Re:Perl

[WWWWolf]

Surely by that definition, script + interpreter + kernel is a full program?

In modern operating systems, there are so many layers of abstraction between the actual program code and the physical hardware that this is all just nitpicking.

Practically, and as intended by the theory, a program is simply a set of instructions. It doesn't matter what language it's written in. It doesn't matter what you need to do to actually execute the program. It doesn't matter what the computer is doing to get the program executed. It doesn't matter what else the computer is doing while it is executing the program.

It's far easier to understand "program" as "a set of instructions" rather than any specific combination of operating system features, libraries, runtime environments or other things like that.

Re:The first rule of Knightclub

[Zerth]

If this is your first night at Knightclub, you have to Knight(someone)

This is cool but...

[BitwizeGHC]

I'd love to see a language where your program is also musical.

Just can't resist...

[Sindri]

In California you program music ... ... but in SOVIET RUSSIA the music programs YOU!

WTF are you talking about

[syrrys]

NO ONE in the US calls a nightclub a discotheque. If they do, then they are gay, or visiting from Latin America. In the US, a nightclub is a nightclub, or club. That's it. Now try to spend your time learning something new, like bathing. Damn frenchies.

Re:WTF are you talking about

[E_elven]

Er, what he was saying was that in the US a nightclub is a place you go dance whereas in Europe a nightclub is a place where you go watch someone take their clothes off.

Re:WTF are you talking about

[syrrys]

I am just trying to keep people from getting beat up. If you use the term discoteque in a non-gay, urban area of a city in the US, someone may try to hit you, or at least berate you in front of everyone. I want foreign visitors to have a good time here. Thats all.

Re:Perl

[TheUser0x58]

One nitpick--i argue that the text file, by itself, is a program, too. How is

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello, World!\n";
print "Hello, World!\n";
print "Hello, World!\n";

NOT a series of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute?

Not-so-obligatory Short Circuit quote

[Dachannien]

http://www.wavsite.com/sounds/41193/short13.wav

Re:Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

there isn't a single op code there.

Having worked with the guy...

[OriginalArlen]

I say: go veeg :)

guideguide alumni: we read your mail. Then we hash it, put it through some fourier transforms and syntheise the results sync'd with live DJs :)

Old CS Student Trick

[Dareth]

When asked to trace output of code section on test, find silly syntax error, claim code will not run and make up a stupid error message instead of sloggin' thru the code like a real trooper!!!

Classmate of mine convinced a teacher to give him full credit and the rest of us who traced the stupid code, ADA by the way, -1 for not reading closely enough.

Re:Old CS Student Trick

[mibus]

I once went the full hog on a similar issue back in high school...

Teacher gave us a "BASIC" program (it was half-basic, half-pseudocode... hard to tell where one stopped an the other began ;).

It read through an array or something (or DATA maybe?), but he put the "is at end of data" check in the wrong place, so it wouldn't actually have run properly.

I wrote out the error he would have got on attempting to run it, the corrected version of the program, and the corrected output.

I got 110% for that day of programming ;)

Re:Perl

[Jimmy_B]

The text file itself is only a script. The script + interpreter is a full program (also worth nothing that several people have whipped up programs that allows you to compile Perl scripts in to native binaries)

By that logic, you would also have to include the operating system and libraries. Note that the definition you cited says nothing about /how/ the computer interprets and executes the instructions.

Busted!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, why are you using Perl inside MS?

I hate camels

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of unabashed, useless, masturbatory dorkery is why I hate perl and anyone who chooses to program in it.

Re:Perl

[TheUser0x58]

I didnt say there were any op codes there. I (or rather, GGP's definition of a program) said a "series of instructions."

Re:Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

Op codes aren't what make a program, instructions are. JMP may be an instruction and a op code, but it's still an instruction by itself in definition. So is perl's goto statement.

The error here is that people are trying to define a "program" with the same definition that describes a "native executable." That is not correct. Programmers don't write executables, they take a program and "compile" it into object code. We generically refer to any executable as a "computer program," which is also correct, but so is it true that a perl "script" is also considered to be a "program." Thus, Perl is a programming language which a programmer (not a scripter, though I wouldn't mind being called a digital scribe from time to time--that sounds pretty nice actually) uses as a tool to aid in the creation of object code. Now, before the argument is made that Perl is interpretive, remember that the interpreter still has to interpret the program into something the machine can understand, aka object code. This may be done in several layers, but it all turns into the same thing: ones and zeros.

I have no idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck the point of your thread was...

However I do know that this whole idea (perl to generate music, on the fly) is kinda cool!

mp3?

[Kent Recal]

So, uhm, now I've read two pages about how someone hacks up music in perl. But I still have no idea what it sounds like. Anyone have a link?

2+4 = 6 of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Ruby is so powerful, it lets you change the laws of math!!!

that's what I get for not actually running the code. :-(

Interesting Code....

[Anonymous Coward]

# 231
sub bang {
my $self = shift;
$self->code->[0] = '# ' . $self->{bangs};
$self->modified;
}

I wonder if his code reflects what he does in his freetime?

what? perl?

[cakestick]

Okay.. I work with a lot of synthesizer/drum machine stuff, Fruityloops is my savior, etc. etc.

Electronic music is something that I can easily grasp because of the logic intertwines with the logic of music theory itself.

However..

Why wouldn't you take a step back when you realized what you're doing here? Integrating programming with music, in both of their current states, is grossly unacceptable. Sure, you can make some nasty basslines with your beeps and what have you, but COME ON.. pay homage to those in the 80s that ensured you would enjoy electronic music by pumping Lionel Richie full of drum machine goodness (and maybe plenty of other things) back when he was recording 'All Night' and shit like that.

Sorry if I offend, but I'm not sorry. Stop programming music, damnit!

On-the-fly

[RobPiano]

http://on-the-fly.cs.princeton.edu/

Those Princeton goofs went a step further. Its now this whole genre of amazing stuff. If you haven't read the papers or tried the software (which is FREE) then you're totally missing out!

live programming performances?

[TheLittleJetson]

well, this explains the groupies at work...

Code reuse

[Brandybuck]

If this guys codes live in front of an audience, I'm guessing he's not really big on code reuse.

"Thank you, thank you, I'll be typing in this same function all week..."

Re:Alex performs live on stage to program his musi

[sp0rk173]

Ahh...composition for the tone def! truely the slashdot way!

SuperCollider not cross-platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although the article says it's only for OSX and Linux, SourceForge has a Win32 binary for SuperCollider.

audacity and nyquist

[alex_tibbles]

audacity's back-end is based on a custom version of sound package nyquist. It is a lisp and has a linux port. It can be used for programmatic sound generation, and being a lisp, you're always in the environment (no need to hack up a multithreaded editor/ interpreter).

Flip the script?

[Doc Ruby]

Alex is pulling off live programming performance, with musical output that can be judged by anyone. How about flipping the script, and turning a musical input device into a programming tool for nonmusical processing? Maybe english/algebra paradigm languages, like Perl, C, Java, and others that resemble structured speech aren't an appropriate target for source code composition. Maybe some geometric/topological metaphor, like a flowchart or signals/filters more directly reflects the expressions and operations of a collection of musical gestures. If we could harness the talent of musicians to control other data processing, we might usher a new age of programming open to people from personal cultures beyond just the hoary old Unix geekdom. Keyboard solo, anyone?