Perl is worse!

[Alex Martelli]

"Steve Lamb" <grey at despair.rpglink.com> wrote in message
news:slrn8o745t.fjt.grey at teleute.rpglink.com...
> On Sat, 29 Jul 2000 22:18:31 GMT, Joshua Macy <amused at webamused.com>
wrote:
> >  So it's not the term itself you find offensive, but the way it's
> >used?  It sounds to me like what you're objecting to is the mere fact
> >that some people dislike the behavior that Larry Wall calls "automagic",
    [snip]
>     Whoops, guess it isn't in some contexts, now is it?  What I object to
is
> their stating that it is a bad thing when it is not, it is just different,
and

So Joshua has it exactly right: you find it *offensive* that people
consider 'automagic' (wild-ass-guessing by the system, based on
insufficient or ambiguous context) a technically inferior approach
to do-what-I-tell-you-DON'T-silently-second-guess-me?!  And you
think that if people express this technical judgment, this justifies
your being rude about them?!

> that was a term that I was unfamiliar with that they were clearly using in
the
> negative based on context.

If you don't know that Larry Wall, the father of Perl, has coined
(I think; at least, enthusiastically adopted) this term to describe
what Perl does in a zillion cases, then you can hardly consider
that lack of knowledge on your part a good and sufficient justification
for rudeness against people using that term, it seems to me.  Your
error may be understandable, but now that you're aware of it, it
would appear that a courteous apology is in order.

Expressing technical judgment is what a technical discussion group
is all about, after all; and using the same term as a language's
inventor does, to describe that language's behaviour, is also hardly
reprehensible, is it?  So, the people thus behaving found themselves
collectively insulted while having done absolutely nothing wrong.
That's why I believe that, once this is realized, apologizing would
display courtesy.  But, of course, this is an etiquette issue, not
one of technical content (some of the best programmers I know, though
not most of them, are people I find exceedingly rude anyway:-).


Alex