🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ukn3702whe.fsf@linda.teleport.com> merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes:
> I hope you see my point by analogy.  Perl code is imminently readable
> to me.  I am fluent in Perl.  Appaarently, you are not.  So it is
> *unreadable* to *you*.
> 
> If you need some help understanding Perl, I perhaps can recommend a
> good book or two. :-)

French is not something anyone is expected to be able to use
productively in a week, nevermind a day or an hour.  There are
languages in which novice programmers can do interesting things with a
small learning curve, something Perl isn't really capable of, in my
experience.  I've taught a handful of non-programmers how to do CGI
coding, and I usually let them pick which language they want to learn
by showing them the exact same simple CGI program in several different
languages, and letting them choose which one they'd like to learn.
There are languages such as Python, which non-programmers can look at
and have *some* idea what is going on.  I've never seen a
non-programmer who has been able to make much sense out of a
relatively simple Perl script, and certainly, none of those people
ever chose Perl as the language they wanted me to teach them.

While I certainly see your analogy, it is hard to deny that complaints
about Perl's syntax are a big problem for the language.  I feel that
readability and learnability are two important design points that Perl
has all but ignored. However, in a way, that's understandable, since
there are so many important design principles, many of which make
implementing others difficult, that I would hardly expect any language
to be all things to all people.  However,  I think that it is quite
unfortunate that the languages that see the most use and support today
cater to the beginning programmer not at all.

John

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|John Viega        	               "Non-structurally equivolent types in C|
|rust@virginia.edu                      are polymorphic vis-a-vis their common|
|http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~jtv2j/     entity, the core dump."               |
|University of Virginia                                  --George Williams    |
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