A disturbing read by someone apparently
involved in language wars at Amazon.
Apart from list flattening and clunky
references, his main problem seems to be
Larry Wall. But because he may have been
drunk at the time, perhaps the style
hides a plea to Amazon management not to
head in perl's direction. Larry Wall,
over my dead body.
The issue of whether your personal atttitude to the
language is determined or not by your
attitude to Larry Wall is an interesting
one, however. A lot of prominent perl
people seem to have a zany sense of
humor, zanier than that of other
language proponents. But perhaps they
acquired it as they learned the
language. Perhaps proponents of other
languages have a sense of humor too, but
are funny in private, rather than in
public.
Here's another URL I want to bookmark,
David Hume's History of England, vol 6:
The skeptical Scottish philosopher's
account of The English Civil War of the
17th century, fought over religion,
warns of the dangers of sectarianism.
It's fascinating. Never again will you
ridicule Third World political
developments, having read this. Where languages like Scheme and C, in different ways, gleefully expose complexity to the user for the sake of making their implementation easier, Perl tends to internalize that complexity and iteratively approach "doing what I mean". If I want Haskell or Scheme, I know where to find it, and these seem to be the logical end of a focus on dogma and theoretical purity. That's religion, and obviously no smart or sane person would ever want anything to do with it! It offends me that you would even mention believing in such a thing!! I fear for the future of Perl that people hold such beliefs!!! Why, it even has environment variables whose scope transcends the program boundaries.
Fear not: Perl 6 will still be Perlish. And, yes, I can well understand the trepidation that non-believers and believers-in-other-gods experience in the U.S., given the coercive perversions of Christian faith that seem to dominate there. But if our reaction is thereafter to fear or censor mere statements of personal religious belief, then the televangelical theo-terrorists will have won. I have never seen Larry treat anyone else's personal religious beliefs (or disbeliefs) with disrespect, though I have seen Larry's own beliefs treated that way many times. I judge his beliefs by the generous and modest man that they allow him to be, and by that criterion they stack up much better than most people's. Odd that the "Ancient Languages" blogger
"Stevey" quoted above accuses Larry in his Onion speech of hating The critical blogger "Stevey" should have listened to the wisdom "judge not lest ye be judged" Also note that the posting is a year old. He's no longer at Amazon. I guess if Google hired him since he wrote this he can't be as clueless as this piece lets on, but wow We Militant Agnostics must tread carefully. Not all fervent believers are dangerous, only the ones who try to tell you how to live your life according to their reading of certain scripture while ignoring other scripture. I had hopes the WWJD fad would help Christians be more like their Christ, but it seems they take the Preacher's word for what Jesus would have them do instead of considering what Jesus did and would do. Paulinist witch-hunting dogmatists are much more dangerous than gentle creative Christians like Larry and C.S.Lewis and JRRTolkein.
Lincoln was asked if he was going to relieve General U.S.Grant of his command due to his drinking problem. Lincoln replied that Grant was his only winning general, so he suggested the questioner find out what Grant was drinking and give a case of it to each other general. In like view, I wish more Christians were like Larry -- more like their Christ and less like my Puritan ancestors who came here to escape religious oppression of them and impose it on others.
in a cult of personality
hfb on 2005-12-31T10:41:09
the personalities are what matter. Perl is the island of misfit programmers. I've felt very alienated and offended at times about the overt religiosity of Larry, too, which I don't think many Americans as a whole understand how oppressive it is until they leave Jesustan with Jerry Fallwell calling Katrina divine retribution, and enter the world where the deep scars of such sorts of religion have made such public ovations of religion a reasonably unwelcome happenstance.
Re:in a cult of personality
djberg96 on 2005-12-31T23:18:23
Matz is Mormon. I guess that leaves you with Guido.
Re:in a cult of personality
hfb on 2006-01-01T13:20:02
I'll stick with Jon Stewart.ditto
Alias on 2005-12-31T11:51:00
I concur I'm afraid.
Weird I can deal with, quirky I can deal with. Having met and had the amazing fortune to go for dinner with Larry (and Damian and Uri) he really is a very humble and nice guy, if somewhat shy.
But the religious it tweaks some very deep red flags, and it's the bit of him (in his writings at least) that makes me very nervous. In person of course, he's just very geeky.
I was very much worried for the future of Perl too.
But fortunately now that the lamdacamels are taking stronger and stronger hold over the the structure of Perl 6 (no global variables, inside-out-haskelly-no-sideeffect-optimisation-everywhere stuff, fundamentally sane parser -> lexer -> backend structure and so on.
They are "pushing back" against the more crazy of Larry's ideas and to some degree stopping the ones that break things badly.
I'm a lot more confident now that I was last year.
Thank god...
Re:ditto
Alias on 2005-12-31T11:52:19
... and god damn we have to stop publishing those state of the onions in text form. They really are unintelligable muck without the on-stage delivery.
Re:ditto
educated_foo on 2005-12-31T13:33:45
I'm a dirty atheist and seem to do alright ignoring the religiosity. This, on the other hand, worries me a bit:
It is precisely the absense of both software engineering preachiness and worship of internal structure that to me define Perl. What if I want to use globals? What if I, as a user, don't care about the lexer's internal beauty so long as it, like a good sewer, simply works without being noticed? This is not to say that the theory isn't useful. I think some part of the Perl community has learned a number of clearer ways of thinking about languages and programs over the course of Perl 6 development. But with this comes the temptation to treat this new knowledge as an end in itself, and Perl's steadfast refusal to do so is to me what gives it its niche and its appeal.
Re:ditto
chromatic on 2005-12-31T19:49:05
Re:globals in Perl 6
Damian on 2005-12-31T22:56:11
Perl 6 definitely has global variables.
Re:globals in Perl 6
educated_foo on 2006-01-01T11:23:25
Thanks, it's been awhile since my last reading of the fine manual.Larry's beliefs
Damian on 2005-12-31T23:09:26
Hmmmmm. I'm probably the atheist who has worked most closely with Larry over the past half a decade. I have never once been preached at, nor felt in any way oppressed by his occasional quiet references to his faith. In my observation, if Larry seeks to convert at all, it's by example rather than by evangelism. I only wish that more Christians were like him (i.e. actually tried to live according to the beliefs they profess).
Re:Larry's beliefs
hfb on 2006-01-01T13:18:06
I don't know that they are quiet references, Damian and I can understand how they might scare people off, especially now with the US being rather divided over such things as "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays."
Re:Larry's beliefs
Damian on 2006-01-02T00:21:07
I guess my main point is that I've never heard Larry say to anyone: "You must believe what I believe". Only ever: "This is what I believe". And that's the defining difference for me between preaching and exemplifying.
Re:Larry's beliefs
n1vux on 2006-01-02T05:48:36
Bravo, thank you Damian. Belief should not threaten us, nor Statement of Belief. To condemn someone for Belief is as bad as would be for them to condemn us for non-belief or wrong-belief. To assume that all fervent believers condemn the differently-believing is itself a harmful mistaken prejudice. (Although with the politically active portion of the US Religious Right, it may be the safe way to bet -- we can not extrapolate safely to the equally religious folks who have better things to do than persecute heathen democrats.)
another of his essays...
lachoy on 2006-01-01T17:43:38
Is Weak Typing Strong Enough? is an interesting companion piece...
