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On Thu, Sep 6, 2007 22:24, Aaron Kulkis <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:akulkis3@HotPOP.com"><akulkis3@HotPOP.com></a>
wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:46E0B66B.4000501@HotPOP.com" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Wolfger wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Perl has, unfortunately, become the modern PL/1, partially because
there is such an overlap of features and methods that there are
many many many MANY ways of doing the same routine task.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">Yeah... We all know how unusable English is, with all those different
ways of saying the same thing. How can anybody read a novel?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
A novel is readable. A lot of valid perl code isn't, just
like a lot of valid PL/1 code is likewise unreadable.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I'd submit that this is a problem with the programmer, not with the
language. I've seen Pascal programs that are extremely difficult to
read and understand -- yet Pascal is a language meant to encourage good
programming practices.<br>
<br>
To continue the analogy (I really like Wofger's points in his previous
message), I've seen plenty of English novels, that, despite being
perfectly valid English, were extremely difficult to read -- by this, I
mean that it was very hard to figure out what the author meant to say,
and the novels required a real effort to slog through, taking all of
the joy out of reading for me. "Atlas Shrugged" and "Ulysses" come to
mind here.<br>
<br>
In other words, just like with any other language, it is possible to
write Perl that is easy to read and Perl that is hard to read. What I
like about Perl is that it does not try to constrain skilled programmer
in a futile attempt to make the programs of non-skilled programmers
better: Perl gets out of my way and lets me get the job done. If my
code is not readable, or is not pretty, or is an inefficient squinky
hack, then I have no one to blame but myself.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">
Mark Montague
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:markmont@umich.edu">markmont@umich.edu</a>
</pre>
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