Re:Perl's had it's day - It's become like COBOL
on
Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 2
When it started it was the only game in town for scripting on unix. Such a great replacement for awk and shell scripts, so much easier to use, much better error reporting, fantastic text processing, nice hooks into unix so you could write neat things. The web and cgi came along and perl was good for writing scripts for that as well. It grew and grew. Now though there are other choices and if you were starting now I can see why perl would look weird. I dread to think what you think of COBOL:)
Re:Perl's had it's day - It's become like COBOL
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Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 2
He said that COBOL was not in anyway like perl and that COBOL hangs around because of inertia. I disputed this by saying that I thought that perl is like COBOL as it is also hanging around because of inertia in many cases. Does this clear it up?
Re:Perl's had it's day - It's become like COBOL
on
Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 2
I don't think it's wrong to like perl and there are certainly jobs for which it's the right tool. But you need to pick which jobs they are, which is what I meant by "choose the right tool for the job".
I've used perl extensively myself in the past and I use it today for knocking up quick scripts. I certainly didn't state that perl sucked, I don't think COBOL sucks either. For what they are useful for they are very good, unfortunately for them the number of things for which they are better than the alternatives is getting smaller and smaller as time goes by.
As for provocative, it means to provoke, in this case a discussion, and it did that. To flame is different.
Re:Perl's had it's day - It's become like COBOL
on
Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 2
I'd dispute this. In some places Perl is just hanging around because of inertia the same way COBOL is. If you've got a bunch of perl code you're likely to write new stuff in perl because you can't rewrite all your existing stuff in some other language, even if that other language is better. But, if you're starting a new project, other than a quick hack, would you really choose perl, just like would you really choose COBOL. I wouldn't for the same reasons in both cases, there are now better choices available.
Re:Perl's had it's day - It's become like COBOL
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Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
Troll???? That's a bit unfair. It's the only post with the beginnings of any thought or discussion so far. As sensible thought as well. People need to rethink there automatic "I'll use perl for this" bias.
I agree, I've used COBOL myself. For what we were doing with it when we were doing it it was the best choice, in fact probably the only choice. That's not the case anymore, just like it isn't with perl. I can see why you're sticking with COBOL, though I'd look at Java as it's probably now the data processing language of choice. I wouldn't rate perl as highly as COBOL wrt its fit in its space anymore. As to Java's maturity, I think you're under rating it pretty heavily. It's mature enough now. btw I imagine you're shop will never use.NET if maturity is a criterion, and rightly so.
Perl's had it's day - It's become like COBOL
on
Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 3, Interesting
For instance there is now OO COBOL but the only people that use it are COBOL programmers who are stuck, perhaps because of their company's dictates, perhaps by choice, with COBOL. In the same way perl may be heading towards irrelevance wrt "mainstream" language. I've written commercial perl in the past, it was a pain then and it's still a pain now. The thing is that now there are alternative languages in the same space (python, ruby etc., php for web side) that do the "perl thing" better than perl.
Perl was great, it introduced many people to programming, just like COBOL did. But now it's time to move on. To move on to languages that learnt from perl, that improved on it, that don't have to drag around a syntax and culture that values neat tricks and trying to guess what the programmer really meant over providing the needed building blocks and letting you build code that does what you say, not what it thinks it heard you say. Or even, dare I say it, to move on to languages outside the perl family for some programming and choose the right tool for the job for a change.
I'd prefer to think of this as provocative rather than a flame, there is a difference you know.
Unfortunately taxes I pay may well go to pay your hospital bills if you're badly injured or support your family if you're killed. In this situation, when you're going to be spending my money, I get to have a say in whether you wear a belt or not. Now, if you had a law that said you didn't have to wear a seat belt but if you didn't you had to pick up all of the tab for any injuries to yourself and you're dependents couldn't claim for support from taxpayers that's fine by me. You want this "right" you have to accept the responsibility.
Namespace URIs are just globally unique identifiers. Though they look like URLs they don't point to any "physical" file. There is no need to dereference a namespace URI. It's a common mistake to think that there is.
"refuses to let idealism stand in the way of progress". Ah yes, I can think of some idealistic positions we need to discard in order to make progress. For example the ideal that you should be able to make digital copies of music you purchase stands in the way of progress, or at least the RIAA would say that it did. Or that pesky constitution, we could make much faster progress if those ideals weren't standing in our way.
I agree, I've used make a lot and find it a great tool. As I say it's better technically than Ant. However, people use Ant instead of Make. Why is this so? I think that part of it is that make is intimidating because of all the features. In some ways it is difficult to get started, not a problem with Ant.
Previously I've attempted a description of the success of an Open
Source product, Ant, in
terms of the Innovator's Dilemma. I think the fit is very good,
provided you recognize how the rewards and costs should be measured in
the OSS environment. If you are interested it can be found at Ant as an
Example of the Innovator's Dilemma. Now I'll have to go back and see
how Ant matches against the guidelines in the article, so far it's looking pretty good.
The software is copyrighted. You have no "right to first sale". If you accept the GPL you have some additional rights over what copyright gives you. You don't accept the license you don't get the extra rights. Don't like it? Write your own damm code.
Very true and well put. The world of shrink wrap is different from the world of internal only enterprise packages, which is also different from the world of expensive packages sold to a, relatively, small number of customers. It's not always true that what works for shrink wrap works inside an enterprise.
I suspect many geeks would also be interested in this book The Great Stink of London about the Victorian engineering works that transformed London and the Thames. A fascination subject, considering the same tunnels etc. are still in use today. If any code you write lasts as long then....
Re:Does that mean? - Judge Death
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 2
That's what the RIAA and MPAA needs Judge Death! All crime is committed by the living, therefore life itself has been declared illegal. Maybe Jack Vallenti can be the first to receive judgement.
The java compiler is written in java so I really don't see what you mean by "Java in Java". Now perl, for instance, is an example of a language that can't build itself.
Part of the success of the google technology is based on the page rank system which depends on many people linking to pages and so "ranking" them. On a corporate site you don't have as many separate opinions (i.e. pages managed independently) so perhaps the page rank part of google won't be as successful. OTOH just having fast search of all the docs would be good here:)
As more and more "modern" (i.e. well known for at least 10 years outside of the "mixed ability corporate development team") features you get closer and closer to lisp/scheme. Once you add closures, which AFAIK, the clr doesn't, you effectively have lisp with a different syntax. Well whoopie. I'd make the "flamebait" statment that any language might as well be lisp/scheme or lacks some feature that lisp/scheme has. The converse, that lisp/scheme lacks something that vb,perl,python,java etc. already has, is not true.
Without a VM? An interesting statement. I presume you don't think that Java provides a VM? At the moment you could use a Java VM, where there are several implementations already, some libre, or you could wait for Microsoft to provide one for you, on windows only. I just don't get your point. Seriously, I'm not flaming, I just don't understand, perhaps you would restate?
Unfortunately this doesn't hurt the people responsible, just the people being paid very little to make the phone calls (now there's a fun job NOT). Rather like those idiots who think its fun to put lots of staples in their tax returns etc. That has absolutely no effect on anyone who can make any difference and just causes problems for the minimum wage workers who have to open the damm things. If you're going to take action make sure the action is impacting those who you want to impact.
It's worked for kooks for many, many years. In fact, you might say it's a "proven" solution to the problems of wireless interference with your brain waves, at least to the same extent that it's been "proven" that wireless hurts your head!
Very well said. The gap in earnings between the people at the top and the people doing the work at the bottom in America has now reached amazing levels.
Slashdot Mirror
When it started it was the only game in town for scripting on unix. Such a great replacement for awk and shell scripts, so much easier to use, much better error reporting, fantastic text processing, nice hooks into unix so you could write neat things. The web and cgi came along and perl was good for writing scripts for that as well. It grew and grew. Now though there are other choices and if you were starting now I can see why perl would look weird. I dread to think what you think of COBOL :)
He said that COBOL was not in anyway like perl and that COBOL hangs around because of inertia. I disputed this by saying that I thought that perl is like COBOL as it is also hanging around because of inertia in many cases. Does this clear it up?
I don't think it's wrong to like perl and there are certainly jobs for which it's the right tool. But you need to pick which jobs they are, which is what I meant by "choose the right tool for the job".
I've used perl extensively myself in the past and I use it today for knocking up quick scripts. I certainly didn't state that perl sucked, I don't think COBOL sucks either. For what they are useful for they are very good, unfortunately for them the number of things for which they are better than the alternatives is getting smaller and smaller as time goes by.
As for provocative, it means to provoke, in this case a discussion, and it did that. To flame is different.
I'd dispute this. In some places Perl is just hanging around because of inertia the same way COBOL is. If you've got a bunch of perl code you're likely to write new stuff in perl because you can't rewrite all your existing stuff in some other language, even if that other language is better. But, if you're starting a new project, other than a quick hack, would you really choose perl, just like would you really choose COBOL. I wouldn't for the same reasons in both cases, there are now better choices available.
Troll???? That's a bit unfair. It's the only post with the beginnings of any thought or discussion so far. As sensible thought as well. People need to rethink there automatic "I'll use perl for this" bias.
I agree, I've used COBOL myself. For what we were doing with it when we were doing it it was the best choice, in fact probably the only choice. That's not the case anymore, just like it isn't with perl. I can see why you're sticking with COBOL, though I'd look at Java as it's probably now the data processing language of choice. I wouldn't rate perl as highly as COBOL wrt its fit in its space anymore. As to Java's maturity, I think you're under rating it pretty heavily. It's mature enough now. btw I imagine you're shop will never use .NET if maturity is a criterion, and rightly so.
For instance there is now OO COBOL but the only people that use it are COBOL programmers who are stuck, perhaps because of their company's dictates, perhaps by choice, with COBOL. In the same way perl may be heading towards irrelevance wrt "mainstream" language. I've written commercial perl in the past, it was a pain then and it's still a pain now. The thing is that now there are alternative languages in the same space (python, ruby etc., php for web side) that do the "perl thing" better than perl.
Perl was great, it introduced many people to programming, just like COBOL did. But now it's time to move on. To move on to languages that learnt from perl, that improved on it, that don't have to drag around a syntax and culture that values neat tricks and trying to guess what the programmer really meant over providing the needed building blocks and letting you build code that does what you say, not what it thinks it heard you say. Or even, dare I say it, to move on to languages outside the perl family for some programming and choose the right tool for the job for a change.
I'd prefer to think of this as provocative rather than a flame, there is a difference you know.
Unfortunately taxes I pay may well go to pay your hospital bills if you're badly injured or support your family if you're killed. In this situation, when you're going to be spending my money, I get to have a say in whether you wear a belt or not. Now, if you had a law that said you didn't have to wear a seat belt but if you didn't you had to pick up all of the tab for any injuries to yourself and you're dependents couldn't claim for support from taxpayers that's fine by me. You want this "right" you have to accept the responsibility.
Namespace URIs are just globally unique identifiers. Though they look like URLs they don't point to any "physical" file. There is no need to dereference a namespace URI. It's a common mistake to think that there is.
"refuses to let idealism stand in the way of progress". Ah yes, I can think of some idealistic positions we need to discard in order to make progress. For example the ideal that you should be able to make digital copies of music you purchase stands in the way of progress, or at least the RIAA would say that it did. Or that pesky constitution, we could make much faster progress if those ideals weren't standing in our way.
I agree, I've used make a lot and find it a great tool. As I say it's better technically than Ant. However, people use Ant instead of Make. Why is this so? I think that part of it is that make is intimidating because of all the features. In some ways it is difficult to get started, not a problem with Ant.
Previously I've attempted a description of the success of an Open Source product, Ant, in terms of the Innovator's Dilemma. I think the fit is very good, provided you recognize how the rewards and costs should be measured in the OSS environment. If you are interested it can be found at Ant as an Example of the Innovator's Dilemma. Now I'll have to go back and see how Ant matches against the guidelines in the article, so far it's looking pretty good.
The software is copyrighted. You have no "right to first sale". If you accept the GPL you have some additional rights over what copyright gives you. You don't accept the license you don't get the extra rights. Don't like it? Write your own damm code.
Very true and well put. The world of shrink wrap is different from the world of internal only enterprise packages, which is also different from the world of expensive packages sold to a, relatively, small number of customers. It's not always true that what works for shrink wrap works inside an enterprise.
I suspect many geeks would also be interested in this book The Great Stink of London about the Victorian engineering works that transformed London and the Thames. A fascination subject, considering the same tunnels etc. are still in use today. If any code you write lasts as long then ....
That's what the RIAA and MPAA needs Judge Death! All crime is committed by the living, therefore life itself has been declared illegal. Maybe Jack Vallenti can be the first to receive judgement.
The java compiler is written in java so I really don't see what you mean by "Java in Java". Now perl, for instance, is an example of a language that can't build itself.
Part of the success of the google technology is based on the page rank system which depends on many people linking to pages and so "ranking" them. On a corporate site you don't have as many separate opinions (i.e. pages managed independently) so perhaps the page rank part of google won't be as successful. OTOH just having fast search of all the docs would be good here :)
As more and more "modern" (i.e. well known for at least 10 years outside of the "mixed ability corporate development team") features you get closer and closer to lisp/scheme. Once you add closures, which AFAIK, the clr doesn't, you effectively have lisp with a different syntax. Well whoopie. I'd make the "flamebait" statment that any language might as well be lisp/scheme or lacks some feature that lisp/scheme has. The converse, that lisp/scheme lacks something that vb,perl,python,java etc. already has, is not true.
Without a VM? An interesting statement. I presume you don't think that Java provides a VM? At the moment you could use a Java VM, where there are several implementations already, some libre, or you could wait for Microsoft to provide one for you, on windows only. I just don't get your point. Seriously, I'm not flaming, I just don't understand, perhaps you would restate?
Rules out Bush too on all three counts. (And also Clinton (for the cheating))
Unfortunately this doesn't hurt the people responsible, just the people being paid very little to make the phone calls (now there's a fun job NOT). Rather like those idiots who think its fun to put lots of staples in their tax returns etc. That has absolutely no effect on anyone who can make any difference and just causes problems for the minimum wage workers who have to open the damm things. If you're going to take action make sure the action is impacting those who you want to impact.
It's worked for kooks for many, many years. In fact, you might say it's a "proven" solution to the problems of wireless interference with your brain waves, at least to the same extent that it's been "proven" that wireless hurts your head!
Dallas is GONE. Austin is still around. How do you get rated informative when the information is wrong?
Very well said. The gap in earnings between the people at the top and the people doing the work at the bottom in America has now reached amazing levels.