Why People Are Passionate About Perl

Abigail on 2008-05-13T14:04:57

Answering to brain d foy's call:

• The person who introduced me to Perl showed me that... Well, the person "introducing" me to Perl didn't show me much. All he did was leaving the first edition of "Learning Perl" on my desk. I flipped through it, played a little with some toy programs, then forgot about Perl for over almost two years.
• I first starting using Perl to... I had created a web site of a branch of major multinational; it was a static website mostly containing pictures and product specifications. Created from a messed up ASCII database dump and a CD of images using a shell/awk script. During the project, I realized there had to be something better than sh/awk, and I remembered that pink "Learning Perl" book. No longer having access to the book, I read all manual pages top to bottom. The rest is history.
• I kept using Perl because... its form and ideas fit my warped brain. I can make it do things the way I want, unlike most other languages.
• I can't stop thinking about Perl..., well, I can actually, but it requires an effort. But the language is huge, and it has a bunch of good people making up the community.
• I'm still using Perl because... I'm too old and don't have the intiative to learn another programming language. I rather read a new book, and try out a new recipe in the kitchen than learn a new language.
• I get other people to use Perl by... Not any more. I used to give Perl classes, and used to work in places where Perl wasn't used as the main language. But I don't do the classes anymore, and I'm working at a place that only uses Perl.
• I also program in ... and ..., but I like Perl better since... SQL, C, and sh. SQL is too domain specific, with C I have to work too hard, and in sh it's too hard to do lower level stuff.

Amen

pudge on 2008-05-15T20:08:02