Clear questions and runnable code get the best and fastest answer |
|
PerlMonks |
Re^4: The future of Perl?by BrowserUk (Patriarch) |
on Nov 11, 2014 at 01:41 UTC ( [id://1106768]=note: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
Anybody wanting to advance perl 5 seriously, should consider starting from scratch! Its called Perl 6. Unfortunately in relative terms, that accounts for mostly nothing. 99% of the complexity of the perl interpreter/compiler/runtime is due to its initial design. That's why you reduce & refactor. 30 something years ago I was contracted by IBM to work a maintenance gig on DB2. It was at that point written in COBOL of which I had minimal experience. I did a 4 week course on it at college. I (typically) went into the APAR database and picked the longest outstanding bugs to tackle. One example was a sev.4 that had been outstanding for 4 years. I spent 3 days trying to understand the bug report in the context of the code; and two more badgering a user to reproduce the problem. Once I understood the problem I tracked the bug to a 2500 line procedure that, upon inspection, although I understood what it was meant to do, I couldn't, from reading the code, work out how it did it! So, I threw away the entire body of the procedure, retaining only the inputs and outputs and set about rewriting it to perform the task it was documented as performing. The result was the reduction of a 783 (those who know binary will understand why the figure sticks in my brain), chunk of code to around 20 lines.
It was the only contract I arranged to leave early -- I bought my way out of it. Two conclusions:
You may be right -- you usually are -- but, given sufficient will, I'd be prepared to expend some time to trying to prove you wrong. C'est la vie. With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
In Section
Meditations
|
|