Snippet from O'Reilly's upcoming fictional novel, the first in a new series
written for its loyal audience of CS professionals:
"Young Perl had definitely reached that 'awkward stage' in life -- not quite
a fully-accepted adult, but definitely not a child anymore. Her parents,
/they/ loved her, she couldn't deny that. They always said they wanted what
was 'best for her', but what did /they/ know?! Perl looked around the party,
seeing all the other kids who seemed to have it all, money, friends -- boy,
they had it /easy/, she thought! Not her. She was just a quiet, but talented
daughter from a blue-collar family --someone her teachers called, kindly,
'hard-working'. Anything but galamorous. She suddenly became intensely
self-aware. 'Just once!', she wondered, 'why can't /I/ be popular?'."
Quoted from David Rook's "A Language Collector Comments On: Java, Perl &
Python"
"Perl has been rumored to stand for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.
I agree. Even after years of working with it, I don't feel comfortable
writing Perl without the most current Camel Book [Programming Perl by Wall &
Schwartz, O'Reilly & Assoc] by my side. For whatever reason, I just can't
get comfortable. It's a little like C, but not enough. For instance, in Perl
you can write "exit if $x ne 'continue'" or you can write a more C-like if
($x ne 'continue') {exit} Unfortunately, you can use both styles in the same
program, resulting in confused readers. Perl has different operators for
string comparison and number comparison, even though it will (invisibly)
convert a string to a number. If I only wrote Perl, this might not be a
problem, but I tend to use a number of different tools, and switching into
Perl mode continues to be a difficult transition. Fortunately, I've found an
able replacement for those system administration tasks I previously would
have written in Perl. So, without throwing more stones at Perl, lets go on
to Python..."
Quoted from /The Perl Journal/
"The true measure of a language's merit is not how many people use it, but
whether they like it. People like Perl."
