Okay, I have been on the sidelines for a while, but now I have to chime in.
I think its obvious to most "Perl" people that Perl is just as advanced as say C++. There are differences... C++ has a whole bunch of complex datatypes - double, int, long, float, and so on - Perl does not. That does not mean Perl is less advanced - its just less complex to the user. The functionality is still there - anything you can do in C++, you can do in Perl. So why don't they teach Perl at the University level? Based on my experience, the answer is simple: Very few faculty and staff know Perl well enough to teach it. I was in school not that long ago, and I didn't know any prof's or asst. prof's that knew Perl to any significant level. There were a few grad students who knew Perl, but even they weren't knowledgable enough to put together curriculum. There are many languages in use today, and it is alot to ask of a University to offer curriculum in each "popular" language. So they stick to C/C++, maybe Java, and thats it. Besides, you go to college to learn how to learn. If you successfully learn C++, you should have no problem learning any other language, given the right resources (i.e a good book!). John Von Essen On Thu, 2 Jan 2003, Abigail wrote: > On Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 10:03:57AM -0600, Steven Lembark wrote: > > > > > While I agree that those reasons count against Perl being used as a > > > primary language of instruction, there's another, IMO, larger reason. > > > It's the same reason why "Mastering Algorithms with Perl" fails. The > > > language itself is too rich; you continually have to side-step from > > > teaching formalisms to discuss syntax quirks, short-cuts, functions or > > > yet another module. > > > > > > All these bells-and-whistles make that Perl is a great language, but that > > > doesn't mean it's a good tool to teach programming or formalisms with. > > > > Java and C++ are equally convoluted. The fact that Perl > > has the features doesn't mean that anyone has to teach > > them. It's the difference between a Programming Intro > > class and one on Perl Programming. > > > > Left to nothing but scalars, math, and simple I/O Perl > > is less complicated than the standard teaching languages. > > > Yeah, but then you're excluding something basic as arrays. But once > you introduce arrays, you got to deal with things like sigils and > context. Which you don't have to deal with in Java, Pascal, or even C. > > If you want to dumb down Perl to something less complicated than > say Java or Pascal, you're left with a language that's too bare bones > to be useful. > > > Abigail >
