From: Mark Slagell <ms@...>
Date: 2000-12-21T05:50:11+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7794] Re: Why isn't Perl highly orthogonal?


> Michael Carman <mjcarman@home.com> writes:
> > ...
> > 
> > Heh. Careful, there! By whom is Ruby intended to be a replacement to
> > Perl? ;)
> >
> > Most of the responses have centered on your example, not the subject of
> > your question. Perl is non-orthogonal by design. From 'perldoc perl'
> >
> >     "The language is intended to be practical (easy to use,
> >      efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant,
> >      minimal)."

While "by whom" may be overstatement, "for whom" is not: "for me", for
one.  I could never get comfortable with the Swiss Army Chainsaw way of
thinking, and was amazed and grateful when I ran across Ruby.  It is
this very tension between beauty & practicality that Ruby renders moot,
a false dichotomy.  Code tends toward compactness and readability at the
same time, expressiveness and simplicity at the same time.  It seems
like the tradeoffs were well chosen.  Speaking just for myself, I can't
think of a good reason to write Perl anymore except when having to
maintain old code, and even then, at least in a couple of cases where
I've had to do it, it has seemed simpler to translate it.

Yes it's unfair to expect Perl to be something it's expressly not
designed to be.  But what Ruby gains in beauty doesn't seem to cost much
in terms of what we think of as Perl's strengths, so there is still
value in the comparison.

  -- Mark

(sorry, I know this is the Thread that Won't Die, but I hadn't put my
$0.02 in yet.)