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User: keesh

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  1. Perl6 is a mistake on Perl 5.8.1 RC1 Released · · Score: 0, Troll
    I've been using perl pretty much constantly since the Pink Camel, and believe me, Perl 5 is an extremely good language for quick scripting things. That's what it was designed for. Sure, you can do big projects in it, but it's not exactly ideal. Recently I've started using Ruby as well, and I intend to move my department over to it instead of wasting time with Perl 6.

    One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

    The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

    Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

    On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

    I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

    Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying.

  2. Re:Is 28 Days Later a remake? on Nobel Prize Winners on Sci-Fi Flicks · · Score: 1

    The plot is from "Day of the Triffids", but with zombies instead of plants. That was a book though, and I'm not aware of any other film version...

  3. Re:A video stream is a video stream. on Nobel Prize Winners on Sci-Fi Flicks · · Score: 1

    Nope. The colours are encoded differently on different discs. Hence the PAL or NTSC information right under the region code.

    BTW, are you from IBM? Didn't think anyone except VM people used 'append' that way...

  4. IBM on Which Organizations Have Standardized on Mozilla? · · Score: 1

    IBM's official standard is now 'Internet Explorer or Mozilla on Windows, and Mozilla on Linux and AIX'. Interpretation depends upon the location -- in Hursley Mozilla has pretty much taken over on Windows...

  5. Re:At first on "Splatometer" Allows Distributed Bug Reports · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Idiot

  6. Same with the Matrix on Hulk Game Codes Hidden In Movie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The road signs in Matrix: Reloaded had cheat codes for the (piss-poor sellout) Enter the Matrix game.

  7. Nice colour scheme on GameFAQs Acquired by CNET · · Score: -1, Troll

    I would read the article, but slashdot's hideous colour scheme has blinded me... Please do something about it...

  8. Question on Bare Bones Celebrates 10th Anniversary · · Score: 1

    What's in BBEdit that isn't in, say, Vim? I've only used Lite, and wasn't impressed -- is the expensive version any better?

  9. Huh? on Fizzer Worm Uninstalling Itself · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They're intentionally running code on peoples' machines without their permission?

  10. Re:Childish... just pathetic on What's Microsoft Up To? · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I agree. Fortunately, I have karma to burn.

  11. Try spelling superscripts correctly on Best OCR for Technical Texts? · · Score: 0, Insightful

    That might help slightly...

  12. Re:Overclocking on Athlon Xp 3200+ 400FSB is Coming · · Score: 1

    Only 'performance' freaks will buy the high-end processors now anyway. Anyone with any sense will save themselves a hundred quid by losing a few MHz...

  13. Re:Isn't this a good thing? on Traffic Cams Co-opted for Surveillance · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The government can still use the cameras. It's only the general public that's been cut off.

  14. Re:More important issues! on Hilary Rosen from RIAA will write Iraq's Copyrights? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Protecting what's yours is a basic human right.

  15. Kensington MouseInABox on 3-button Optical Mice? · · Score: 1

    I have a Kensington MouseInABox. Optical, USB, four buttons plus clickable wheel, but the buttons can be mapped so that the wheel doesn't have to be button 3...

  16. Re:Your answer is not in the CPU on Linux SMP Round-Up · · Score: 1

    Better yet, use SSA or FibreChannel. Far faster.

  17. Perl 6 is a mistake on Perl Features of the Future - Part 1 · · Score: 2, Flamebait
    I've been using perl pretty much constantly since the Pink Camel, and believe me, Perl 5 is an extremely good language for quick scripting things. That's what it was designed for. Sure, you can do big projects in it, but it's not exactly ideal. Recently I've started using Ruby as well, and I intend to move my department over to it instead of wasting time with Perl 6.

    One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

    The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

    Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

    On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this . Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

    I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. To put it bluntly, Perl scripts will still look less beautiful than our friend Mr Goatse. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

    Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but BSD^W Perl is dying. Larry is buggering it up the ass without lubricants, just like Shoeboy is doing to Larry's daughter.

  18. Frost Pist on Instant Concert CDs? · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Hail Eris!

  19. The Creek on Don't Eat The White Snow Either · · Score: 4, Funny

    This wouldn't be Shit Creek, would it?

  20. Pathetic on Adopt a KDE Geek · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    This is really pathetic.

  21. IN SOVIET RUSSIA on NSA Cryptography References? · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    There's lots of information on the NSA...

  22. Who cares? on FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 Now Ready · · Score: -1, Troll

    *BSD is dead.

  23. News? on Discovering New Music? · · Score: 5, Funny
    Are there weblogs that allow users to discuss music much like Slashdot discusses "news"?
    You mean a weblog with lots of duplicate entries about last year's music?
  24. So what? on MicroBSD 0.6RC2 Released · · Score: -1, Troll

    *BSD is dead.

  25. IN SOVIET RUSSIA on Got Sleep? · · Score: -1, Troll

    In Soviet Russia, sleep gets you.