Re: What do you think about having a tool for PERL ?

what about you think about having a tool to help u to writing a perl scripts , itis a good deal huh . tool meaning is some thing like a NetBeans for Java which make things easier making drag and drop and make the life easier .

Well, I guess that's the difference between opening a can of chili and serving it cold with some tired white bread toast and flat ginger ale on one hand, and on the other hand, mincing garlic and chopping onion by hand, throwing it onto some hot olive oil and following it with some fresh ground beef, sprinkling on some spices, some red wine and of course some hot sauce for flavouring, letting the whole mixture stew for an hour or two, adding some tomato paste, some kidney beans and perhaps some rich bouillon, letting it cook down a bit, maybe thicken up some, while you broil some sourdough bread, spread it with some real butter and serve hot with some icy cold beer.

Opening a can of something isn't the same as cooking something from scratch. I cook stuff from scratch, and that's the way I write a lot of my code too, unless you count all of the goodness that I get from CPAN -- but those guys are real chefs, and their recipes are well-tested by constant use.

A GUI is fine when you're learning, but I consider that kind of stuff training wheels. To get real work done, you gotta get down to the command line, to the raw ingredients. Really.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

Comment on Re: What do you think about having a tool for PERL ?

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Re^2: What do you think about having a tool for PERL ? by philcrow (Priest) on Nov 26, 2007 at 15:14 UTC
I'm immediately drawn to this argument about both food and code. Who wouldn't rather have home cooking than canned food? But, on reflection I have to consider what is "scratch" cooking. Is a pie still made from scratch if I buy a crust and only make the filling? What about if I buy flour already ground? Would it only be from scratch if I bought wheat instead (or grew it myself for ultimate freshness)? In programming, I don't ultimately like scratch much, if it means assembly or even C. Perl has a lot of benefits. But, it does diminish my understanding, since I've never written a regex engine and I haven't implemented a hash since college. I'm willing to let others do those things. The history of programming (more so than the history of cooking) is about moving the definition of scratch up the stack. And so it is for the OP and previous commentators. While I don't use an IDE myself (and I insist that a language is too complex, if you must use one to write in it), I don't disparage those who do. Why shouldn't we endorse commoditization of common tasks? That is really our whole history. Phil The Gantry Web Framework Book is now available.	[reply]
Re^3: What do you think about having a tool for PERL ? by talexb (Chancellor) on Nov 26, 2007 at 16:52 UTC
All things in moderation, including moderation. (Author unknown.) I consider myself very lucky to have developed software using assembler (a bit-slice processor in the late 70's, the 6809, x86 and 68000 in the 80's and 90's), then C (late 70's to the late 90's) and finally Perl (late 90's until now). I don't need to build my own hardware or write my own assembler or compiler, but I know enough about doing those things that I appreciate what's going on underneath. So by all means build on the work that others have done before you, as long as you appreciate the history that has gone before you. And I have made my own pastry and pizza dough, from scratch -- yes, it's a little more work, but it's worth it if you have the time. And when time is short, it's fine to use a good quality prepared ingredient. Just as long as you have a deep understanding of what the meal (or the code) is made from. Alex / talexb / Toronto "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds	[reply]


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