[conspire] vim vs sed awk and grep + interactive vs automation [was Re: Slice of life]

[Carl Myers]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 03:19:56PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:19:56 -0700
> From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Organization: Dis-
> Subject: Re: [conspire] vim vs sed awk and grep + interactive vs automation
> 	[was Re:  Slice of life]
> 
> Quoting Tony Godshall (tony at of.net):
> 
# snip...
> > [1] There is actually a "rational subset"[2] of perl that's actually
> > quite readable.
> 
> Yes, indeed.  Nick Moffitt (also on this mailing list) was actually the
> first Perlista whose code I could consistently read, because he writes
> C-like Perl, bless him.  Before I saw his scripting, I was worried I'd
> never learn to understand the damned stuff.

I actually find a lot of perl to be HIGHLY readable.  We had a codebase at my
old company which simultaneously provided example after example of both the best
and worst perl I have ever seen.  Even with "bolted-on" OO in perl, it can be
very nice.  Maybe I'll write a blog about how *I* think perl should be done some
day, but suffice to say that because of the inherent flexibility in the
language, I am able to write perl with is more legible and better
self-documenting than even supposedly "more clean" languages like python, or
java.  Remember, $_ is not a mountain, and "because it is there" is not a
sufficient reason to climb it =)

-Carl

-- 
Carl Myers 
PGP Key ID 3537595B
PGP Key fingerprint 9365 0FAF 721B 992A 0A20  1E0D C795 2955 3537 595B

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