[ruby-talk:7052] Why do people think Perl is ugly? (Vent); was: Why isn't Perl highly orthogonal?

> IIRC, Larry Wall has referred to Perl as being a "diagonal" language.
> Instead of forcing a rigid method of doing things, Perl provides you
> with options and allows you to choose the most natural (i.e.
> idiomatic) method. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is
> largely a matter of preference. If you want a minimal language, then
> it's awful. But if you want to be able to write an arbitrary piece of
> code quickly and concisely, then it's wonderful.

Since we're on the topic of public perceptions of Perl, I'd like to
bring up something that's bothered me for quite a while.  Why is Perl so
commonly described as "ugly" and "difficult"?  When I first needed to
learn Perl I approached it with a sense of foreboding because I had been
told many times about how ugly the language is.  One llama book and one
camel book later I still hadn't gotten to the "ugly" part. Four years
later I STILL haven't found the ugly part.

I think a lot of the perception has something to do with regular
expressions.  Granted, regexes can get pretty confusing, but only to the
degree that the endeavor itself is confusing, and unlike most
languages, no MORE confusing than the endeavor itself. For example, if I
wanted to crunch down all whitespace to single spaces (as I often do
with web-based data entry), it's certainly simpler to use this code:

  $name =~ s/\s+/ /g;

then the character-by-character looping that is necessary in languages
like Visual Basic.  (That's not quite true anymore because most
languages help you with string processing with ... regular expressions!)

Furthermore, Perl has a wonderfully short DTHW (Distance To Hello
World). Ever notice that most Java books don't even get to Hello World
until the second chapter?  That's because you have to learn all the
concepts before you even get to do something simple. Don't get me wrong,
I love Java, but it's hardly "simpler" than Perl.

OK, I'm done venting.  This thread has just brought up the frustration I
sometimes feel when I'm working in other languages and I miss the
simplicity, conciseness and beauty of Perl.

-miko


--
Miko O'Sullivan
Author of The Mikodocs Guide to HTML
http://www.mikodocs.com/tags/


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