people who confuse the usefulness of a language with whether they personally like it.

I concur. To expand on this slightly I should mention this especially applies to highly specialized languages and those in a different paradigm than the programmer is used to. For example, someone who has only programmed in c, java, and perl may think prolog is entirely useless while someone extensively involved in AI programming may think it's the best thing since beer with skittles. Moral of the story: you haven't programmed everything yet (if you have, I have a job for you), so you don't know how useful a given language could be. Oh, and 5 points off for referring to python programmers as zealots (python rocks!).

I'm sure it does - I haven't tried it myself yet, mostly because I'm not fond of the idea that the amount of indentation of a line defining semantics rather than just reflecting them, but I don't really know much about Python at all, so I can't speak on it.

Neither do I want to, btw; I think there is nothing wrong with Python, Python programmers, Python developers or whatever. In fact, the whole zealotry thing is of course not limited to Python at all, but since my personal experiences in this regard have mostly been with Python programmers (who also disliked Perl a lot, to say the least), I mentioned those.

Sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes - I wrote "python zealots" to distinguish them from "python programmers", not to imply that the latter were necessarily the former. :)

Apart from that, I agree that there a lot of cool languages for all sorts of jobs; Prolog is one of them, of course, and Erlang also comes to my mind right now. I think that Perl is usually either a good tool for a given job or can be turned into one relatively easily, but it is not *always* the best tool, and using Perl for everything just because it is Perl would be zealotry as well, I guess. :) Everything has its own linguistical niche (even Malbolge).

Oh, and as far as having programmed in every language is concerned - I guess that's impossible. In one of my introductory courses to computer science (longer ago than I would like to think - goodness, I'm feeling old), the professor mentioned a compilation of known programming languages from 1972 (!) that listed more than 700 of them. I guess a lot of these aren't around anymore today, but I also think that a lot more have been invented, so not even a Leonardo da Vinci would be able to learn them all. ;)

... people who sneer at perl because it is "just a scripting language" instead of a "real" programming language.

Ah, the age old question of Do scripters suffer discrimination? (it's a slashdot link, don't bother). Well, sadly scripters will always be second to us real programmers. Disregard all you here about "programming is programming" the only people who say that are TCL programmers anyways. Real programmers use real languages, like Python and Perl ;-).

TCL - that's another one I have never really looked into (but which I don't feel the need to look into, either). :) On a serious note, the people who I mostly heard this from where the same who thought that languages should be as simple and limited as possible (so the compilers would be less difficult to build) and that functional programming languages were automatically, inherently superior to imperative languages. Now, I do think that functional programming is a cool thing myself, and a very interesting approach, but things like this always leave a bad taste in my mouth - it's basically just slapping labels on things and then arguing on what's better based on what the labels say, rather than based on the inherent qualities and merits of the things themselves. The same happens with regard to computers etc. in general, too (linux vs. *bsd, for example, solaris vs. linux, sparc vs. x86 and all that), and in fact, it's not even limited to computer science-related topics, but I think going further into that would be completely off-topic now. :)

... the decision to not include a proper switch statement in perl. foreach etc. may work, but it looks like an ugly kludge to me (or at least ugly).

I group switch in with goto as ugly, unmaintainable, brute methods of programming. Perl's a very high level language, use it like one!

TMTOWTDI. :) Anyhow, why do you think switch (or goto, for that matter) is a low-level language concept?

... vi.

And emacs, yuck, talk about being left in the 70s. Use kate, take back the mouse!

I personally found joe to be best-suited for my needs - if you ever tried running X applications (KDE or otherwise) over a dial-up line, you'll know why I prefur the console for now. ;)

... software patents, the people who grant them and the people who apply for them

Do not blame those who apply for them, they can't pass up the opportunity when there competitors have it as well. The problem lies with those agencies that grant the patents out of ignorance.

Indeed. But still, even applying for software patents as a purely defensive measure is a dangerous thing at best, not to mention that it shows how fouled-up the situation is, anyway (defensive measures were not exactly the initial idea behind patents, after all). I don't blame companies like Red Hat for getting patents on certain things that came from their labs, but I don't think this is the right way to go, either. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi (not literally quoted), "there is no way to peace - peace is the way", and I think that holds true about software patents as well. The best way to go would be to abolish them altogether; otherwise, if things continue like this, we might end up having to sign NDAs just to attend basic math lectures at universities in 50 years simply because the theorems and results presented are covered by patents and copyrighted all over.

Cynical? I wish it'd be. :)

Okay, now I'm just getting silly. Nice post and goodnight :).

Thanks! The same to you. :)

--
mowgli

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