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From: wheeler@ida.org (David Wheeler)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Dear Programmrers,
 PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK,
 PASCAL).
Date: 31 Jan 1995 23:18:36 GMT
Organization: IDA, Alexandria, Virginia
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References: <jong-240195111026@macx20.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk>
 <3g77ao$6qg@www.interramp.com>
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Date: 1995-01-31T23:18:36+00:00
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Bob Munck (pp000166@interramp.com) wrote:
: jong@mrc-cpe.cam.ac.uk (Jong Park) wrote:
: >
: > Dear Programmers,
: > If you still wonder which language you want to specialize for
: > long, try PERL. 
: > ...
: > I just want to share the joy I have with PERL after years of 
: > doubt, disappointment and effort in other languages.

: Let me add my own $0.02; I've been writing a fair amount of
: perl lately in doing WWW support.

: IMHO, perl rots.

Let me say hear, hear.

I wrote a tutorial-generating program in perl to help
me write Lovelace (an Ada 95 tutorial).
Perl is really nice for short (10-15 line) programs, but
it has some serious weaknesses in scaling up.

Perl's attitude is that "programmer never makes a mistake", an attitude
that has been repeatedly proven wrong.  One problem that its
syntax encourages errors, and it blithly ignores them.
For example, if you forget to put a $ in front of variable names, it
will sometimes do the right thing & sometimes the wrong thing.
The == and eq operators do different things, and have the opposite
meaning of awk. Perl also inherits the awful =/== confusion from C.

Perl is a very useful tool for very short (10-50 lines)
quick & dirty programs if they involve a good deal of text processing
and occasional errors are okay.

Perl isn't an appropriate tool for larger, more complex programs.
As always, choose the appropriate tool for the job.

--- David A. Wheeler
Net address: wheeler@ida.org