Xah Lee has been known in the Perl community for some time for his irrational hatred of Perl.
Last week he announced his new Perl/Python mailing list. The idea is that each day he'd post a piece of Python code and the equilvalent piece of Perl code. He is posting them to his mailing list here.
Except, of course, the flaw in this plan is that as he dislikes Perl so much, the Perl he posts isn't particularly good. There's been some discussion of this on comp.lang.perl.misc (where he is helpfully cross-posting his examples), but there's no evidence that he actually reads the replies to his messages.
So yesterday I spent half an hour pointing out some of the worst problems in his Perl in postings to his mailing list - they're still there in the message archive. But when I posted another message later in the day it was bounced back as the list options had been changed so that only the moderator could post.
I don't really mind people posting bad Perl on the internet (although, obviously, I'd really rather that they didn't) but it's pretty cowardly not to let anyone else comment on it.
But I remember that Xah Lee is that dick from the MacPerl list who wouldn't wrap his lines.
He's a low-grade kook.
Re:Helllooooooooo, Xah Lee!
pudge on 2005-01-19T05:20:50
Yes, he wrote a long dissertation about this, complaining about I and tchrist complaining about him. Incredible.
He also wrote a rant about Perl, in which he also invoked my name. He's funny.Re:Helllooooooooo, Xah Lee!
pudge on 2005-01-19T05:25:23
Oh, and I wrote very few emails to Xah, and this was most of the extent of it, where I asked him to stop insulting people who used Unix, and corrected him on some of his errors.
I recommend, davorg, you remind him of his promise: "When one day Mac OS is unix-like, then I'll take an axe and chop my head in two."
Re:Helllooooooooo, Xah Lee!
perl-programmer-john on 2008-02-16T18:07:08
Noticed this entry a bit late, but I (without doubt with some others helping) had his hosting provider kick him out: http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/t2/harassment.html
Re:Orkut
drhyde on 2005-01-18T10:30:01
People still use Orkut?
I refer, of course, to the Limerick. On his web site he has this:
I know a monger named Wall
who always peddles his Perl
if he had any grasp
he would just LISP
Wall's nothing but a troll
--Xah Lee, 2000-02
There's lots of problems here. First of all, Wall, Perl and troll don't rhyme. Nor do grap and LISP. And then there's the metre - there's one missing syllable in the first line, one in the second, one in the fourth, and one or two in the fifth.
Re:Lee's other problem
ziggy on 2005-01-18T22:58:27
There's a more serious problem.Years ago, at dinner with a bunch of mongers, the subject turned to Lisp. Larry said something like (I paraphrase):
So much for Larry just using Lisp if only he were smart enough.Common Lisp is a great language. Except for the lack of syntax.;-)
