From: "Ben Tilly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 06:40:40 -0700
On 9/11/07, Bob Rogers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From: "Ben Tilly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:18:57 -0700
>
> On 9/11/07, Palit, Nilanjan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...]
> > > It is very bad form to use map as a looping construct.
> >
> > Can you elaborate why it is a bad form: readability, performance, ...?
> > Just want to understand the underlying reason. (To me, both the for &
> > map inline forms appear to be the same readability & performance
wise.)
>
> Readability is the big difference . . .
>
> . . . Furthermore you're demanding
> more from your readers than you need to. Anyone who speaks English
> (or who knows a couple of computer languages) can guess what a for
> loop does. But only people who know Perl will understand what map
> does.
>
> Am I reading this right? Are you actually defending the lowest common
> denominator of language design? The paragraph above seems tantamount to
> saying,
Not exactly. I'm saying that *all else being equal*, make things as
simple as possible.
Fair enough. I don't think that's quite what you said, but perhaps I
took your statement to be more general that you intended.
> Perl has some nice functional programming features, but don't
> use them, because you might confuse people who only know
> stupider languages.
All else is not equal in that case. :-)
That said, know your audience. Using functional techniques in Perl
should be a deliberate decision. In many programming groups, I'd
never use them because the others couldn't maintain that code.
That's pretty sad. After all, "map" is in "perlfunc" -- you don't even
have to "use" anything, much less install something from CPAN. So
normally I would pounce on any such opportunity to enlighten my
colleagues. But I assume you know *your* audience in this case . . .
-- Bob
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