>there are times when it's actually worth the effort to ... Oh yes. Now, do you determine whether the trip is worthwhile by examining hammers or by examining the nails? (Language zealots all seem to have the problem of looking only at the hammers;)
>A Britt, a Scotsman, an Aussie, a Texan, a New Yorker and a Californian >were sitting in a bar... >-None of them could understand what the others were saying. Better scope than "America and England are divided by a common language". Since programming is an entropy reducing exercise, the style is used to obtain leverage on certain aspects of the problem (claimed advantages) at the expense of ignored and unknown aspects (unclaimed disadvantages). >And perl is a dialect of LISP, isn't it? Methinks this is too much like the "high-level" and "low-level" bit about languages. The level is in the use of the language, not the language itself. I would guess that perl evolves to "do" LISP as opposed to "be" LISP. LISP suffers because it has exactly the right number of parentheses, too many, and none of them optional. LISP has an advatage in that it is possible to say exactly what it intended, without a lot of extraneous baggage going along for the ride. For any particular context, it is relatively easy to do something better than LISP. If the context is unknown (or worse if what is "known" is wrong) then LISP has the advantage. Aproximately. Hammer strikes nail. Hammer shatters. Nail just sits there. Nail is driven in eventually. Nail is driven in quickly and efficiently. How good does the hammer have to be so that the nail doesn't win? What I like about PHP is that it is possible to use it effectively, without taking the time required to learn PHP. The functions are irregular because PHP prefers not to get in the middle of the mess. This has of course the disadvantage that it will NOT stretch very far. (Which applies to any language, even LISP;) Composition of functions is associative. Gaining leverage on that fact tends to be rather lispy. I suspect that perl will employ a different tact (than LISP). Functional code, even straight-forward top-down brute force, is not as ineffecient as one might imagine. Any leverage will dominate the so-called language efficiencies. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of J.C. Roberts Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2005 8:21 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: misc@openbsd.org Subject: Re: beginner, intermediate, and advanced scripting On Sun, 15 May 2005 05:32:07 -0500, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >To add to your excellent analogy with hammers, >Do you drive across town to get that one best hammer to drive one nail? > Oddly enough there are times when it's actually worth the effort to go across town to pick up a hammer better suited for the particular job of driving a single nail but equally, as you've implied, there are other times when you're better off just using the hammer you happen to have with you. If that single nail has any chance of being something that must be maintained by someone else or has any chance of growing into something larger, you really don't want some wise ass like me coding the darn thing in a language like "whitespace" or "brainf*ck" for the fun of it. Of course, the real problem is at the start you just never know what the initial code might eventually become... >OT. I use PHP, I like PHP. >Perl Monks: PHP - it's "training wheels without the bike" -- Randal L. >Schwartz >Pretty accurate. (But imagine PHP if perl didn't exist;) > "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain Hmmm... since I already shaved my head tonight, it's a little late for Occams' Razor, none the less, just follow the money. Randy Schwartz is in the *BUSINESS* of promoting perl, so such statements are to his financial advantage. Language zealots more often than not have financial incentives for promoting their views. Some sell books, others sell their services and still others want their existing skills to seem valuable to potential employers. Everybody's got to eat, so you can't call the biased (self) promotion entirely bad and realistically, it's unavoidable. I can not even mention OpenBSD without in some strange way promoting the value of my own (limited) ability to use it. As long as you recognize the agenda being pushed, you can draw your own unbiased conclusions. Sure, perl has it's place in the world but so does PHP, PDP-11 assembly and the countless other languages out there. Just because I happen to own the 40 pound maul of a PDP-11 Assembly Language Manual does not mean the poor bastard that will be asked to maintain my code is going have the same hammers that I have. The choice of language is only part of the answer, since then you must answer the questions of syntax and style; the syntax and style I prefer to use in *my* C code may make it easier for *me* to work on it but there are countless people out there which prefer some other syntax and style which would make it easier for them to understand and work on the code. There are people with particular, peculiar and very strong opinions about the "best" syntax to use within a single language such as case/switch, goto and other legal statements. The issues of style, spacing and formatting are equally fraught with strong opinions of the "best" way to do it. Kind of brings to mind a joke; A Britt, a Scotsman, an Aussie, a Texan, a New Yorker and a Californian were sitting in a bar... -None of them could understand what the others were saying. >(But imagine PHP if perl didn't exist;) As for what PHP would become if it was the only language on the planet that people used and improved, the answer depends on which language zealot you happen to ask. I'm quite sure Paul Graham would very happily tell you all the logical reasons why the end result would eventually be a dialect of LISP. ;-) JCR
