Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

[Jong Park]

Dear Programmers,
If you still wonder which language you want to specialize for
long, try PERL. 
My experience tells it is very logical in many ways. I mean, whenever
you wish to this and that way, it always has a way prepared for it. 
Partly because it has got many good features from many different
languages. The easyness and usefulness are unmatched by any
other language while it can be extremely powerful.

I just want to share the joy I have with PERL after years of 
doubt, disappointment and effort in other languages.

Sincerely 

Jong

-- 
Jong PARK, MRC Centre For Protein Engineering, Cambridge, Korean 
Tim Hubbard's student. jong@mrc-cpe.cam.ac.uk, (44) 01223 402134

Re: Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

[David Weller]

In article <jong-240195111026@macx20.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk>,
Jong Park <jong@mrc-cpe.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>Dear Programmers,
>If you still wonder which language you want to specialize for
>long, try PERL. 

Been there, done that.

>My experience tells it is very logical in many ways. I mean, whenever
>you wish to this and that way, it always has a way prepared for it. 

No matter how obtuse is may seem! :-)

>Partly because it has got many good features from many different
>languages. The easyness and usefulness are unmatched by any
>other language while it can be extremely powerful.
>
Without invoking any other language, do the following:
	1.  Write a device driver
	2.  Write a graphics rendering program.
Come back when you're finished.  (Hint: Can't be done)

>I just want to share the joy I have with PERL after years of 
>doubt, disappointment and effort in other languages.
>
Look, Perl is very cool for very certain things.  Tom Quiggle even
write a nice Ada source reformatter in Perl.  It AIN'T a swiss army
knife, however.  I like it as a shell language though, because it's
portable (roughly speaking :-)

-- 
       Frustrated with C/C++, Pascal, Fortran?  Ada95 _might_ be for you!
	  For all sorts of interesting Ada95 tidbits, run the command:
"finger dweller@starbase.neosoft.com | more" (or e-mail with "finger" as subj.)
	

Re: Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

[Bob Munck]

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.

I'd give a fairly important segment of my anatomy for an http
server written in Ada, supporting cgi invokable functions also
in Ada.  Ideally, it would contain or use a small, fast ERA
database for lightweight hypertext structures.

Bob Munck, fledgling webmaster

Re: Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

[Mike Meier]

Jong Park (jong@mrc-cpe.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: Dear Programmers,
: If you still wonder which language you want to specialize for
: long, try PERL. 

Well, I have found perl to be a wonderful alternative to C, awk and shell
programming for a wide variety of small- to moderate-size tools (i.e., less
than 5K LOC).  But, I truly balk at the idea of using it as a substitute for
Ada (or even C) for larger efforts (where heavy-duty design is needed).  It's
especially useful where powerful, predictable text processing is needed (its
pattern matching is unbeatable).  But, it fails to scale up in many of the same
ways that C is known to not scale up well.

Take this from someone who has used C, awk, shell, and Ada for many years now
(and even used C on some decent-sized projects).  Use perl for anything less
than 5K, C or Ada for anything less than 100K, and Ada only for anything bigger.

Mike Meier
Magnavox Electronic Systems Company
e-mail: mjmeie@ss3.magec.com

Re: Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

[Scott Leschke]

What the HELL is this ?

Scott Leschke


jong@mrc-cpe.cam.ac.uk (Jong Park) writes:

>Dear Programmers,
>If you still wonder which language you want to specialize for
>long, try PERL. 
>My experience tells it is very logical in many ways. I mean, whenever
>you wish to this and that way, it always has a way prepared for it. 
>Partly because it has got many good features from many different
>languages. The easyness and usefulness are unmatched by any
>other language while it can be extremely powerful.

>I just want to share the joy I have with PERL after years of 
>doubt, disappointment and effort in other languages.

>Sincerely 

>Jong

>-- 
>Jong PARK, MRC Centre For Protein Engineering, Cambridge, Korean 
>Tim Hubbard's student. jong@mrc-cpe.cam.ac.uk, (44) 01223 402134
-- 
Scott Leschke

Re: Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

[Larry Wall]

In article <D30J7o.G8K@ss3.magec.com> mjmeie@ss5.magec.com (Mike Meier) writes:
: Jong Park (jong@mrc-cpe.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: : Dear Programmers,
: : If you still wonder which language you want to specialize for
: : long, try PERL. 
: 
: Well, I have found perl to be a wonderful alternative to C, awk and shell
: programming for a wide variety of small- to moderate-size tools (i.e., less
: than 5K LOC).  But, I truly balk at the idea of using it as a substitute for
: Ada (or even C) for larger efforts (where heavy-duty design is needed).  It's
: especially useful where powerful, predictable text processing is needed (its
: pattern matching is unbeatable).  But, it fails to scale up in many of the same
: ways that C is known to not scale up well.
: 
: Take this from someone who has used C, awk, shell, and Ada for many years now
: (and even used C on some decent-sized projects).  Use perl for anything less
: than 5K, C or Ada for anything less than 100K, and Ada only for anything bigger.

We are pushing Perl upscale a little bit by adding various (optional)
declarative features, but by and large I'd agree with you.  I'd much
rather the flight control software on the airplane I'm riding in be
written in Ada than in Perl.  Perl will always be primarily about text
processing, simply because I feel that much of our everyday lives is
about text processing.

Larry Wall
lwall@netlabs.com

P.S. I do apologize for the exuberance of some of my recent converts.   :-)

Re: Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

[David Wheeler]

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

Re: Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

[Charles J. Fishburn]

Bob Munck (pp000166@interramp.com) wrote:

: IMHO, perl rots.

Is that good or bad?

- Chazzz

-- 
+------------------------------+   /~~~~~\__/~~~~/ Life is better with
|Chazzz Fishburn               |  | ]--##-##----+-------------------/###`-,
|Net: fishburn@on-ramp.ior.com |  | ]--##-##---+--------------------\###,-`
+------------------------------+   \@@___/--\___\  6 strings and no frets.

Re: Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

[Larry Wall]

In article <3g77ao$6qg@www.interramp.com> Bob Munck <pp000166@interramp.com> writes:
: IMHO, perl rots.

Perl is biodegradable!  You heard it here first!    :-)

: I'd give a fairly important segment of my anatomy for an http
: server written in Ada, supporting cgi invokable functions also
: in Ada.  Ideally, it would contain or use a small, fast ERA
: database for lightweight hypertext structures.

Your world, and welcome to it.

Larry

Re: Dear Programmrers, PERL seems the Language to go for. (I have used, BASIC, C, C++, TCL/TK, PASCAL).

[Andrew Dunstan]

Bob Munck (pp000166@interramp.com) wrote:

: IMHO, perl rots.

: I'd give a fairly important segment of my anatomy for an http
: server written in Ada, supporting cgi invokable functions also
: in Ada.  Ideally, it would contain or use a small, fast ERA
: database for lightweight hypertext structures.

I've done a lot of Ada, and now do a lot of perl - result of changing
jobs. I love Ada, and am quite taken with perl, for all its
uglinesses. 

They really are best suited to different problem domains. Today one of
my colleagues asked me for som help with a shell script he was getting
errors from. I quickly diagnosed the problem - he was trying to use
unix2dos as a filter, and this won't work. "Would you like me to write
one for you?" I offered. "How long will it take?" he asked. "About 10
seconds," I replied, and scribbled

  perl -p -e 's/\n/\r\n/;'

We should stop slinging off at other languages indiscriminately. We
_should_ criticize the use of languages inappropriately, and we should
extol the virtues of Ada - there are so many.


cheers

andrew