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Re: "Baby" Perl versus "Bad" Perl

by Your Mother (Archbishop)
on Dec 04, 2005 at 02:13 UTC ( [id://513886]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to "Baby" Perl versus "Bad" Perl

And to think I decided not to try to write a Perl book a couple of years ago because I was scared the code wouldn't be good enough. :)

On the OT of martial arts. I was a guest student at a Goju school, my background is mostly Taekwondo. One of the senior students, who I outranked slightly, chatted me up, commenting how he found Taekwondo practitioners were the easiest to beat at tournaments. I said something like, "Oh. I see," and never said anything else about it to anyone. A couple days later the head instructor calls me into his office and says, "I heard you had a little trouble with ______. I completely apologize and it's been taken care of."

There are good schools in all arts and they invariably have that kind of instructor; one who knows everything that's going on and won't tolerate disrespectful BS. You should go back if you can find a school like that.

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Re^2: "Baby" Perl versus "Bad" Perl
by chanio (Priest) on Dec 04, 2005 at 03:26 UTC
    I agree too!

    'Hell is full of people with good intentions.'

    I guess that it all depends on the target that the writer is pointing to.

    If you read a book of someone that is teaching perl to crack certain machines and steal something. You would not be able to judge him as a good or bad perl evangelist, because:

    • 1) He has surely proved that his code works like he wants to. And his readers buy his book because they know what he did with perl.
    • 2) It is not supposed to be good code. It is not targeted to all the world.
    Like any other piece of comunication. It all depends on one's own common sense. Or at least, on the money invested by people that know nothing about programing :)

      It is not supposed to be good code. It is not targeted to all the world

      That's kind of like saying: "The Feces Cookbook" is a fine piece of writing because it's not targeted to all the world.

      We generally only tolerate this low quality of writing in journalism. Technical books of any sort are, and should be, held to a higher standard.

        We generally only tolerate this low quality of writing in journalism. Technical books of any sort are, and should be, held to a higher standard.
        You are always right. But it depends on how it is classified when it is sold. It shouldn't depend solely on the authors opinion, don't you think? That is where critics should do their job.

        I mean, Larry Wall once stated a difference between programing well and becoming a qualified expert. It all depends on what you use perl for.

        I like naive aproaches to perl programing, because their target is very limited. Then certain readers do not feel intimidated by complex academic concepts. Perl is a better tool than DOS's Batch, but people is still using that limited language! Or even other more esoteric ones. Some simpler languages succeed in fields where perl should always be the main reference. Just because their authors were not pretending more than what they targeted to.

        I wonder what would had happened if Windows people had always worked with perl as a glue language to do simple things. Perhaps, they would have all been now working with LINUX :) .

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