> Please CC Otto in all replies concerning this topic. I want to make sure he
> reads how wrong he is about Perl and its readability and I think Simon sums it
> up perfectly here.
>
Thank you very much for the CC and including Simon's message at the end.
> I also want to add that all of those strange looking symbols make Perl the
> powerful language it is. I love the freedom Perl gives me to express my
> algorithms in my own unique, and hopefully efficient, manner. TMTOWTDI baby!
>
Could you imaging being the leader of a 10 people project where
everybody design and codes in their own unique manner?
[...]
> I did not move to Perl because it had the simplest syntax (that wasn't what I
> was looking for anyway) and I personally feel that shouldn't be your main
> motivation in choosing a language to begin with. I moved to Perl because it
> allowed me to create extremely powerful, portable, and flexible programs faster
> than any other language I have currently ever used. Just learn it well, Otto,
> and you'll soon appreciate and love Perl's rich syntax.
>
I'm choosing a new language only if is suitable for most of my tasks and
these range from the 10 line script up to several million line project.
Currently Perl is rather capable for any small scripting task but it's
out of questions if there are more than 2 person involved or the line
count goes above several hundreds (maybe thousands). And this is only
because to much time is lost in understanding what all the other code is doing.
> To all you great programmers working on Perl6, don't make it Pascal (and I know
> you won't) make it the better TMTOWTDI Perl I know it can be. Thanks for
> listening to my rant.
>
I don't want to make Perl into Pascal, I mentioned it only to
drastically show the difference in readability.
[...]
> On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 11:34:41PM +0100, Otto Wyss wrote:
> > - Make readability your main objective. Readability is possibly the
> > weakest part of Perl.
>
> There's nothing fundamentally about Perl that makes it unreadable. Seriously.
> Perl doesn't write unreadable Perl, people do. You can write some beautifully
> readable programs in Perl. You can write some horrible programs in Perl too.
> Try it. Take an algorithm and write it in as many ways as you can. Try and
> make it as ugly or as beautiful as possible - the fact is, you *can* choose
> how readable you want it to be.b
>
In other words it's the english speaking children's own fault if they have
more reading problems than others? Of course there are beautiful poems
written in english as well. And I'm definitely not going to say most
written english is horrible. No it's not horrible it's only not easy
readable. I this respect perl and english are rather equal.
> Oh, sure. So it has funny symbols. But it's a different language![1] It's just
> like reading things written in Cyrillic. That's unreadable if you don't
> know any Cyrillic. Well, duh. Once you know the alphabet, it's as clear as
> day.
>
It's is not proven but I suspect even russian speaking children have much
less problems than english. I wouldn't be surprised if this holds for
Japanese as well.
[..]
> In short, no. Readability isn't the weakest part of Perl; it's the weakest
> part of Perl programmers. "You can write FORTRAN in any language". Because
> Perl gives people a means to express their thoughts in a manner more compact
> than their ordinary natural language, they do.
>
> Oh, and you think Perl is more English than German? Here's someone who doesn't
> think so:
>
> ``Perl is the successfull attempt to make a braindump directly executable.''
> - Lutz Donnerhacke in de.org.ccc
>
I've never said German (or Italian) is the better language than English.
I only said English is not as easy readable. And even if there isn't any
study it's obvious that Perl is not as easy readable as Pascal.
As the facts stands Perl5 is not well suited for medium to large
programming tasks. But as much as I understand Larry Wall Perl6 might
get into the position of a capable candidate. If it will be, only
history will tell us.
IMHO Perl lacks readability and IMHO not enough is done during the RFC
process. If you really like Perl don't questions this personal opinion,
better look for solution in enhancing readability without compromising
usability so I might change my mind later on. It's not easy to find the
hot spots neither easy to fix them. How about going through the perl
mailing lists and look for all the silly novice questions?
IMHO Perl lacks modularity or better said a construct similar to a
standard library. Besides the missing standard library in Pascal was the
reason why Pascal didn't succeed. So it might be necessary to have a
separate RFC process on which modules where included an with which
interface. Maybe there isn't just one library.
IMHO Perl does not lack usability but usability is so important, it
always has to be kept in mind.
O. Wyss
PS. Please don't forget to CC.
