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

[mjmeie@ss5.magec.com (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