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in reply to Re: What do you think about having a tool for PERL ?
in thread What do you think about having a tool for PERL ?

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

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