[NTLUG:Discuss] Direction Recomendations

[Rusty Haddock]

MadHat wrote:
    >Please...
    >It is easier to avoid 'Language wars' if you don't spout bad things
    >about languages (that apear to be based in personal opinion, but are
    >presented as fact).  Perl is a great language.  There is nothing wrong
    >with it, and just because you choose to not like it does not mean that
    >it is a mess or bad.

Another way to fuel 'Language Wars' is to say that "there's nothing wrong
with [a programming language]." Perl maybe a "great" language but it's far
from perfect.  Deal with it and carry on!  All programming languages were
created by imperfect human beings thusly they are imperfect (i.e.  there's
something wrong with it).  That's the way it is; that's the way it'll
alway be. 

There's always something "wrong" with any given programming language
whether you recognize it or not.  Some are too big, some are too small,
some are too low-level, some are too high-level, some are compiled, some
are interpreted, some compile for a "virtual" machine, some don't run on
your platform, some don't run on my platform, some were developed with a
single paradiagm in mind, some were developed from a multitude of
paradiagms, some were "invented" by one or two people, some were
"invented" by committee (Hello Ada!), some do, some don't. 

As has been said before -- there is no one single programming language
(nor operating system -- nah! let's not go there :-) that will serve the
needs of all people nor all problems.  Perl is a great Swiss Army Knife
(SWK) and can help solve a great number of problems but that's one SWK
that I won't be using when I'm trying to get the most performance out of a
Ferrari nor help me when I'm working on the inside of an analog watch. 
This is an analogy, OK?  Correspondingly, I won't be using Perl to program
nuclear explosion or black hole horizon simulations (like my cohort here
at work does for his PhD thesis) where great speed is needed nor will I be
using Perl on my credit-card terminals at work or on my microcontrollers
at home where I don't have a lot of memory to spare. 

Do I think Perl is a good language?  Who cares!!  I don't use a
screwdriver when the job calls for a wrench and I've got work to do! 

	-Rusty-
-- 
   _____        Rusty Haddock  =  KD4WLZ  =  rusty at fe2o3.lonestar.org
|\/   o \   o
|   (  -<  O o  Thanks, Sparky!          Charles M Schulz (1922-2000)
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