Re: Andy Roonie is perhaps excessively optimistic

As a Perl programmer who is gradually converting to Ruby, I've followed
this thread with some interest.  I'm not going to bother going into too
much detail - I'm too tired.

Is Ruby better than Perl?  Yes.  It is.  There is no doubt in my mind
about it.  The only thing Perl has that Ruby doesn't at this point is
CPAN, and time will take care of that well enough.

Does that make Perl a bad language?  No.  Hell no.  Sure, all those
funny symbols make the code a bit of a pain to read, and sometimes you
get obfuscated code, but it's still a powerful and good language and
obfuscated code is hardly unique to Perl.  But Perl wasn't great, and
*that* ladies and gentlemen is why we now have Ruby and Python.  Where
would Ruby be without the foundation of Perl?  Especially the regular
expression syntax!  Matz and Guido took what they liked about Perl and
reshaped it into something a little different.  But let's not forget
where this all began.

I'll leave you with a quote from Larry Wall that I think is appropriate:

"Anyway, there's plenty of room for doubt.  It might seem easy enough,
but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park.

Jurassic Park, that is."
--Larry Wall in <[e-mail]>

:)

Regards,

Dan