Why use Perl when we've got Python?!

[xah]

Tom Christiansen wrote in message <37b414d7 at cs.colorado.edu>...
>     [courtesy cc of this posting mailed to cited author]
>
>Legibility is purely subjective.
>
>How legible do you find Greek, Arabic, Russian, or Chinese?  And what
>does the character set actually have to do with any inherent complexity
>of the grammar or richness of expressive vocabulary?
>
>Answer: nothing whatsoever.


I'd like to extend what Tom Chrisiansen has said.

Have you ever glanced at a graduate math text? It's probably all Greeks to
you. However, if someone in the know who translated all the symbolism to
plain English, then it becomes legible. It really depends on who's doing the
reading. If you are a math guy, then perhaps symbols is your thing. Most of
us would prefer English. Legibility is purely subjective.

However, the ivy tower class of buttheads insist on symbolism for math,
clinging to the fancy that certain ideas are better expressed in certain
language. They created a whole barrier of entry. You couldn't believe what
kind of perverted use of symbols they invent. I know because I've been there
a bit. Their one-language ideology taints our programing world. If you
wonder why so many languages uses weird syntax (e.g. python, dylan, lisp,
haskell, mercury, mathematica ...ad nausea), you have these guys to thank
to.

I like Perl because it offers freedom and accessibility to imbeciles like
myself. It lets me fuck around, and have my say. I can sit and spin on the
whole established human wisdom. If someone cannot read my code, it is their
shortcoming. As Tom has said in other posts, freedom is a feature. And if
one day I am tired of Larry's Perl, I can fork my own version/vision. (Larry
said it is OK, and in fact encourages forking.)

On a personal note...  Do you know what a computer science degree is these
days? They require you understand shits like lambda calculus, logic, graph
theory, combinatorics, or even algorithms?? All for what? All the Perl
programers I know doesn't understand any of these, and they all are making
big bucks in fortune 500. I'm not ashamed that I dropped out of school. I
hope that Larry and Tom's teachings will eventually make such subjects
disappear for good.

My humble $0.02.

 Xah
 xah at best.com
 http://www.best.com/~xah/PageTwo_dir/more.html
 "Your nonsense is no better than mine."   --Mathematician of metaland.