Surely you can write code that is just (almost..) as ugly and unmaintainable in Python as you can in Perl, just as you can in C, or almost any other language. You can write highly readable and structured assembler, for that matter.
It all depends on whether you are writing code to be read and maintained by others, or code with which you yourself will have a problem with the next week.
If the code you're referring to is unintelligible, and it's not supposed to be, then it's badly written, whatever language it's in.
But it makes little sense to condemn a programming language because there are a lot of unskilled/inexperienced coders out there!
The distinction between Java on the one hand, and Flash and Quicktime on the other hand, is that Java is to a reasonable extent NOT a proprietary product, at least not any more.
Granted, Sun developed Java initially, and still chairs the Java Community Process for changes to the language and its environment, but it by no means gets all its own way against the likes of HP, IBM, Apple, Borland, Oracle, Sony...
Can anyone imagine a "Windows Community Process", where MS sat round the table with leading industry techies and discussed which Windows APIs should be changed, how new technologies should be integrated, etc.?
The whole point of desktop Java is that it should like be a common infrastructure for non-trivial webpage code.
MS wouldn't play by the 'cross-platform-compatibility' rules that Sun set out for Java, and I think the popular desktop environment is diminished by its loss from XP.
Finally, since there are several sources of Java VMs apart from Sun, I don't think I would like to be told to install Sun's JVM, when other competing VMs run better, and on more platforms (IA-64, PowerPC, Linux, AIX,... OS/2!)
In the end they backed down, because of the ill-will generated, but in the MySQL case, I think many people's sympathy would be with MySQL AB - apart from not sitting on the domain name themselves, of course.
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You can write highly readable and structured assembler, for that matter.
It all depends on whether you are writing code to be read and maintained by others, or code with which you yourself will have a problem with the next week.
If the code you're referring to is unintelligible, and it's not supposed to be, then it's badly written, whatever language it's in.
But it makes little sense to condemn a programming language because there are a lot of unskilled/inexperienced coders out there!
Maybe Perl6 will only be like Perl5 in the same way that Wirth's Modula3 language is like Modula2 - or Algol68 is like Algol ...
Granted, Sun developed Java initially, and still chairs the Java Community Process for changes to the language and its environment, but it by no means gets all its own way against the likes of HP, IBM, Apple, Borland, Oracle, Sony ...
Can anyone imagine a "Windows Community Process", where MS sat round the table with leading industry techies and discussed which Windows APIs should be changed, how new technologies should be integrated, etc.?
The whole point of desktop Java is that it should like be a common infrastructure for non-trivial webpage code.
MS wouldn't play by the 'cross-platform-compatibility' rules that Sun set out for Java, and I think the popular desktop environment is diminished by its loss from XP.
Finally, since there are several sources of Java VMs apart from Sun, I don't think I would like to be told to install Sun's JVM, when other competing VMs run better, and on more platforms (IA-64, PowerPC, Linux, AIX, ... OS/2!)
In that case, the new boys wanted to kick out the existing domain owners for fear it would confuse their customers ...
(http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,32936,0 0.html)
In the end they backed down, because of the ill-will generated, but in the MySQL case, I think many people's sympathy would be with MySQL AB - apart from not sitting on the domain name themselves, of course.
(http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33330,0 0.html)