The Power of Perl

darkerix on 2005-04-26T18:34:19

Some people complain that Perl is a loose language and it's chaotic. There are too many ways to do a single thing.

But that's exactly what is so good about Perl. Larry Wall explains Perl that it is meant to evolve like a language and like language you can express the same meaning in many different ways. So what people are complaining about is exactly what Perl is asking you to excel in. Do it anyway you like - that's what Perl is saying.

Ideally that's what you should be doing. You should really be talking with your computer. Instead of treating it strictly like a beast without a soul, you should talk to it. You should use a language that is rich and unobstrusive, that is evolving and polite. A language which you can use as poetry or to decree a judgment. That's how Perl fits in. It's a tool that I use to talk to my computer. I can talk to my computer more naturally in Perl than any other language. So why wouldn't I use it?

I don't need statistics to confirm if I should be using Perl. That "Ma wide" grin is naturally inherent when you really use Perl.


Plus Plus

milardj on 2005-04-27T15:18:06

When I program Java I'm *constantly* having to refer to javadoc (anyone ever have the joys of reading/writing to a file in java). When I program perl it's always "Well it would make sense for this to work" and happily Perl usually concurs.

Re:Plus Plus

milardj on 2005-04-27T15:20:37

Hmmmm ... That sould probably be:

When I program Perl it's always "Well it would make sense for this to work" and happily perl usually concurs.

Re:Plus Plus

darkerix on 2005-04-28T05:47:17

Yeah...also I am running an experiment on Perl and see what happens when I use it for a couple of years.

Will I find many ways to express my thoughts like in natural language? And, the more ways I can express my thoughts in different context, the more control and mastery will I have on that language?

I'd say...

cog on 2005-04-27T17:32:20

$ perl -lne 'while(/\b\w+?\b/cg){$_{$&}++}}{for(sort{$_{$a}$_{$b}}keys%_){print"$_ -> $_{$_}"}' your_entry|tail

should -> 5
it -> 6
language -> 6
s -> 6
you -> 7
that -> 8
a -> 8
is -> 9
to -> 9
Perl -> 9

I'd say you're on the right track :-)

Use the toolbox

Aristotle on 2005-04-28T12:37:18

<your_entry tr -sc '[[:alnum:]]' '\n'|sort|uniq -c|sort -n|tail

Looks nicer, too.

After 4 years

darkerix on 2009-10-16T12:41:20

After 4 years of experiments and many other languages, frameworks, systems down the line, including life changing experiences ... finally I have reached a more meaningful conclusion.

Perl is still one of the best languages around. Not just because of the quality, performance, community and all the good stuff that makes a language great, but also because of the lack of bull shit.

There are many stuff in Perl that makes the ultimate sense. Without explanation (too much to explain) I will just list what I have found to be the best features that I love so much about Perl or for that matter any system that would have them.

1. Simplicity and compactness. Bigger is not better and larger is often clumsy.
2. Evolving nature, TIMTOWTDI is the key of evolution!
3. Array is argument function can't be beaten! Function arguments must be dynamic.
4. A little messy is always good. You always start off neat and pretty, but in time the workshop floors will accumulate mess. If it doesn't then you are probably not doing your job well!

There is always magic in mixing things up. Simplicity often masks the presence of great power. It's the non obvious that often escapes us, but holds key to true technologies of tomorrow!