Random Perl ... rant

[Jonathan Rockway]

* On Thu, Apr 03 2008, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Jonathan Rockway <jon at jrock.us> wrote:
>
>>  Anyway, the point of this rant is that IDEs are necessary for Java
>>  because the language requires you to offload every detail of the code to
>>  the source file.  Perl lets you keep that information in your brain.
>
> Yeah but I don't want to keep a load of information about programming
> in my brain, I want the computer to hold stuff in _its_ brain. It's
> just better at it.

No it's not.  The things that a computer can keep track of for you are
trivialities that you should never have to think about.

Programming is hard because it involves constant creativity, thinking,
and planning.  Computers can't be creative, can't think, and can't plan.
If your programming projects are tedious and don't require creativity,
you are doing something wrong.  Instead of patching over your
incompetence with buttons you can click to get docs, you should learn
how to program instead.

> Having a perl runtime co-existing with an IDE that does a 90%ile job
> of autocompleting method & class names, provides high speed access to
> docs, and so on would be a big win, IMO.

You've just described PerlySense.

> If you think typing a class name into search.cpan.org is a "high speed
> access to docs" you haven't used  an IDE.

Nobody said this.

Regards,
Jonathan Rockway

-- 
print just => another => perl => hacker => if $,=$"