Better Perl

[Peter Hickman]

Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> personally I'd rather
> they'd all fuck off and do their stuff in PHP or whatever is fashionable
> today and let the rest of us get on with writing code for businesses
> that know what they are doing.
>   

With an attitude like that is it any wonder we can't find any new Perl 
programmers and are becoming a Java shop. Keep it up and we will have a 
common bond with tcl programmers and can spend all our time complaining 
about how our great language is being ignored. There are less people 
turning to Perl to do cool things, being a Perl programmer is becoming 
synonymous with being a maintenance programmer and being viewed as 
grumpy beardy wierdo's with a chip on their shoulder.

The 'rest of us' is a small group and getting smaller.

Newer languages certainly make a lot more sense to the new comer, consider

for =$*IN -> $guess {
     ...
}

versus

for $guess in <IN> {
     ...
 }

The first is a complete bf, are we honestly saying that we can't come up 
with something better than that? This is all just adding chrome to a bad 
design in the hope that the bling will distract people from the design 
issues.

Some people just love unnecessary complexity, they used to be called 
Java programmers but I have a feeling that Perl programmers are looking 
for a way in.

-- 
Peter Hickman.

Semantico, Lees House, 21-23 Dyke Road, Brighton BN1 3FE
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