Someone above commented that, as soon as he finished his degree, his workplace would not *allow* him to take the time to design code properly (lack of design being the main problem). Sure I think that more rigorous CS degrees (in some cases) will encourage proper design if people are given the opportunity.
What we really need is for someone to draw up a few different coding philosophies with various different tradeoffs (ie. "we want (reliability|security), no matter how much time it takes", or "We want a reasonable amount of reliability, and want to get it out in a reasonable amount of time", or "We're in a hurry! Fast coding required"). Then companies could specify the policy they use in their job ads, and people who know how to code properly can avoid the wrong ones.
However, what company is going to admit to cheap and fast...
In summary, there are two problems: 1) Poor coders 2) Management rushing coders
You've addressed problem 1, but what about problem 2?
So if you don't like the way your day has gone, you just recreate yourself the next morning from your backup you made the day before, so that you can have a rerun. And you can make a backup before you do anything dangerous, and...
Look, if you're that keen, there's something called Perl 5 that you can use *right now*. But Larry's taking the time to do it right, and so far, the only thing I think he's wrong on is significant whitespace.
As for more powerful pattern matching, you'd lose some coding speed that way (important for one-liners!). And if he started using those SML or Haskell things, people really *would* think it was an ivory tower-type idea.
As for anti-hacker, Larry originally wanted the community to do it themselves, but the community almost unanimously declared they wanted Larry to do it. Why? I can think of a number of reasons. One is that one of the primary virtues of Perl programmers is Laziness. Another is that only Larry, and possibly 4 or 5 others, have the authority/mindshare/community respect/whatever to get everyone to follow when they suggest things as radical as Larry has been suggesting.
I personally have some good ideas about where programming languages in general should go (that's what I thought about while I was unemployed:) ). I divided mine up like Larry divided the Apocalypses. I haven't had time to compare my regex ideas with his yet, but in general, it seems like all my ideas can actually be added on to Perl 6 as a module (thanks to the extra-flexible syntax).
Anyway, much as I'd like Larry to move faster, in the long run, I'd prefer to see him do it right, because it will advance the state of programming languages in general (which is to be greatly encouraged). Assuming that eg. Ruby is better Perl 5 (I've no idea:), but anyway...), and that Perl 6 is better than Ruby (for me (but not others), I think it will be), how long will it be better for? Probably Ruby will advance too. As someone mentioned, it's been widely recognised that Perl5 regexes are better than other regexes. Hopefully the same will happen with some of the features of Perl 6.
The point is, we're getting a shorter idea to finished product time, and to me, that's what Perl is all about.
I work with some computer repair techs, and they have found that the program Bonzi Buddy (claims to be helpful & cute) makes your system degenerate over the course of a few months, causing any one of: - random crashing - can't dial up - various other problems Unfortunately, once the problem has started, uninstalling Bonzi Buddy does not remove the problem, and generally a reinstall is needed (however, if you catch it early, you can just remove it). Anyway, I submitted a virus report to all the virus companies I could track down; one responded "We'll look into it", and the rest didn't respond at all. I was hoping that the Antivirus companies would have an option "Treat Bonzi Buddy, Comet Cursor, Gator, and other malware as viruses", turned on by default. But it doesn't look like they will.
If O'Reilly is reading this article, I'd like an updated version of Systems Performance Tuning (including Linux), which has a big lot of flow charts (ie. if your system is slow, then determine bottleneck (insert instructions here); if it is memory/cpu/network/whatever then go to page xx).
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As someone above said, they'll have a consultant do it.
Someone above commented that, as soon as he finished his degree, his workplace would not *allow* him to take the time to design code properly (lack of design being the main problem). Sure I think that more rigorous CS degrees (in some cases) will encourage proper design if people are given the opportunity.
What we really need is for someone to draw up a few different coding philosophies with various different tradeoffs (ie. "we want (reliability|security), no matter how much time it takes", or "We want a reasonable amount of reliability, and want to get it out in a reasonable amount of time", or "We're in a hurry! Fast coding required"). Then companies could specify the policy they use in their job ads, and people who know how to code properly can avoid the wrong ones.
However, what company is going to admit to cheap and fast...
In summary, there are two problems:
1) Poor coders
2) Management rushing coders
You've addressed problem 1, but what about problem 2?
:)
So if you don't like the way your day has gone, you just recreate yourself the next morning from your backup you made the day before, so that you can have a rerun. And you can make a backup before you do anything dangerous, and ...
:)
Look, if you're that keen, there's something called Perl 5 that you can use *right now*. But Larry's taking the time to do it right, and so far, the only thing I think he's wrong on is significant whitespace.
:) ). I divided mine up like Larry divided the Apocalypses. I haven't had time to compare my regex ideas with his yet, but in general, it seems like all my ideas can actually be added on to Perl 6 as a module (thanks to the extra-flexible syntax).
:), but anyway...), and that Perl 6 is better than Ruby (for me (but not others), I think it will be), how long will it be better for? Probably Ruby will advance too. As someone mentioned, it's been widely recognised that Perl5 regexes are better than other regexes. Hopefully the same will happen with some of the features of Perl 6.
As for more powerful pattern matching, you'd lose some coding speed that way (important for one-liners!). And if he started using those SML or Haskell things, people really *would* think it was an ivory tower-type idea.
As for anti-hacker, Larry originally wanted the community to do it themselves, but the community almost unanimously declared they wanted Larry to do it. Why? I can think of a number of reasons. One is that one of the primary virtues of Perl programmers is Laziness. Another is that only Larry, and possibly 4 or 5 others, have the authority/mindshare/community respect/whatever to get everyone to follow when they suggest things as radical as Larry has been suggesting.
I personally have some good ideas about where programming languages in general should go (that's what I thought about while I was unemployed
Anyway, much as I'd like Larry to move faster, in the long run, I'd prefer to see him do it right, because it will advance the state of programming languages in general (which is to be greatly encouraged). Assuming that eg. Ruby is better Perl 5 (I've no idea
The point is, we're getting a shorter idea to finished product time, and to me, that's what Perl is all about.
I work with some computer repair techs, and they have found that the program Bonzi Buddy (claims to be helpful & cute) makes your system degenerate over the course of a few months, causing any one of:
- random crashing
- can't dial up
- various other problems
Unfortunately, once the problem has started, uninstalling Bonzi Buddy does not remove the problem, and generally a reinstall is needed (however, if you catch it early, you can just remove it).
Anyway, I submitted a virus report to all the virus companies I could track down; one responded "We'll look into it", and the rest didn't respond at all. I was hoping that the Antivirus companies would have an option "Treat Bonzi Buddy, Comet Cursor, Gator, and other malware as viruses", turned on by default. But it doesn't look like they will.
bash$ company
bash: company: command not found
bash$ artist
bash: artist: command not found
Phooey. For a second, I thought that I'd found some nifty new Linux commands.
:)
If O'Reilly is reading this article, I'd like an updated version of Systems Performance Tuning (including Linux), which has a big lot of flow charts (ie. if your system is slow, then determine bottleneck (insert instructions here); if it is memory/cpu/network/whatever then go to page xx).
:)