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in reply to Principle of Inclusion

if you're not careful, you could easily saw off your own leg, to say nothing of the fact that it's ugly and noisy and belches noxious fumes while you're using it, but that all provides a great deal of versatility and power that is rare in other languages.
Could you clarify what you mean by "versatility and power"? Or maybe quantify what "rare" means. In the following list of languages, which are less versatile and less powerful...
  1. Python
  2. Ruby
  3. Lua
  4. Smalltalk
  5. Haskell
  6. ML
  7. Common Lisp
  8. Scheme
  9. Java
  10. C++
  11. C#
  12. Prolog
  13. Icon
  14. Erlang
  15. Rebol
  16. PHP
  17. JavaScript

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Re^2: Principle of Inclusion
by apotheon (Deacon) on May 27, 2006 at 18:51 UTC

    Sorry about the tardy reply. I was actually thinking about how to put my thoughts on the matter into words in the intervening period. The intent I tried to convey seemed so obvious from my perspective that I had to reorient a bit to see what needed to be explained. My failing, not yours.

    Basically, I'm not saying that languages having versatility and power (like Perl's) is necessarily rare. Rather, I'm saying that the sort of versatility and power you get with Perl (as opposed to types of versatility and power you don't get with Perl, like Ruby's excellent object model and the full range of Lisp macro capability) is generally rare in other languages. Language features like proper lexical closures (my favorite Perl toy these days) are not widely accessible in many other languages.

    Besides, there are a few languages out there that I wouldn't really call particularly "versatile" or "powerful" except within very narrow ranges of use, such as PHP, Javascript, and QBASIC.

    print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);
    		 - apotheon
    CopyWrite Chad Perrin

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