>| >A lot of
>| >non-gurus
>|
>| So what?
>There are far more non-gurus using perl than there are gurus. If all we
>cared about was the gurus, we wouldn't need Perl.
Wrong. And irrelevant.
>| Pick your own quotes is a perl thing. Let them learn this concept.
>| If they can't, you made a bad hiring choice.
>It may be a perl thing, but it isn't a Perl thing, at least not until
>"recently".
You're completely full of ... wrongness. Again.
% perl1 -e '$_ = "fred"; s#d#e#; print;'
free
>make it difficult on them in the first place? Remember the easy things
>easy, etc.
Catering to people who don't know Perl in such a way that it hamstrings
those who *do* is brain-dead. Ease-of-long-term is more important than
ease-of-learning. You're only a beginner once--or, if you would,
ignorance is merely an ephemeral state. Well, for most people;
as for those who are permanently ignorant, you can't fix them,
so don't even try.
We don't write Greek using Latin letters just because more people
know Latin letters! It's a minor point. It's part of the language.
Pick-your-own-quotes is part of what makes Perl useful and easy to
write and easy to read. Just as Greek would be *harder* to read
transliterated into Latin script, so too would Perl be harder to
read if you had to go shoving a backslash up the frontside of every
slash. Teepees are *not* harder to read. It's too much to factor
out, and makes no sense. Just because the smallminded blow a fuse
doesn't mean we should screw Perl--those fuses were meant to be
fried.
>| Transforming everything that's syntactically distinctive in Perl a
>| simple C-looking function will homogenize it into the same boring
>| sameness (and thence to illegibility) as the proverbial fingernail
>| clippings stranded in a bowl of oatmeal.
>This is also an opinion. Homogeneity isn't necessarily boring. In fact,
>it can often be quite liberating and allow one far more flexibility and
>creativity than previously.
It may be just an opinion, but it is the PERL OPINION (read: part
of what makes perl, perl) and if you don't like it, go play with a
different language, or write your own. Different things are supposed
to look different. Different things are *not* supposed to look the
same. You haven't read enough of Larry's writings about this.
--tom
