Unlike many Perl luminaries I did not arrive at Perl from the more traditional *nix tool-chain route but rather from the stilted world of Windows. So rather than seeing Perl as a fancy integrated version of shell, Sed and Awk I just saw it as another progamming language.
Overtime I've grown away from Windows, I don't use it at home anymore, my work is all *nix server based, it's only my work desktop system that is Windows based - and that's only a platform to run Cygwin or PuTTY on.
During the christmas period I've been doing some hacking at home, learning to do new stuff in Shell, and starting with Sed and Awk. Learning Sed and Awk is interesting, sort of like using Perl's more primitive ancestors - which isn't far from the truth I suppose. Some things are easy to do and most of the time should probably be done in Sed or Awk - something are easier in Perl and worth the overhead of starting Perl for.
Soon my conversion from Dark Side will be complete. If I were allowed a *nix desktop at work, I'd have nothing to with Windows at all...
Funny, I followed the exact same trajectory.
It’s amusing, no? “Ah, so that’s where that ugly wart in Perl came from.”
Re:
ajt on 2005-12-30T13:15:15
I'm not alone on the path to enlightenment - always good to know.
I agree, as you study the ancestors you can see the improvements Perl made and the baggage it still carries.
