

Why I Like Perl - antiform
http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/101155.html

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hsmyers
Good read. Comments are interesting as well. Since I started with Python and
then switched to Perl, I guess this means I'll have to learn Haskell now. BTW
when I made the switch I noticed immediately that I found Perl far more
'comfortable' then Python. I later came to the conclusion that there was a
relationship kind of thing; if you liked/loved 'C' then you would feel the
same about Perl. If you liked/loved 'C++' then you would feel the same about
Python. Absolutely no evidence beyond the intuitive here just something that
came to me...

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SwellJoe
I went from Perl to Python and back again over the span of about ten years
(with lots of other languages before and in between). I like them both, but
Perl is also more comfortable for me. Ruby maybe even moreso, but I've never
done any large projects in Ruby, so I can't say for sure. But I do know that
when I write a few lines of Perl, even after ten years, I tend to include a
few syntax errors...when I was learning Ruby I was often stunned by how many
lines of code I could write between syntax errors. It's probably an order of
magnitude higher, and something I've never experienced before. Python, I found
to have roughly parity with Perl, which many Pythonistas find shocking. But I
agree that there are different types of folks, though I don't know that one
can do the comparison with C and C++...maybe C and Java.

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SwellJoe
Mostly interesting, though some of his assertions are somewhat questionable.
Like saying that Perl5 takes its OO style from Python. I'd like to see some
citations on that, as I don't find them at all similar (beyond both being
object systems in a dynamic language). The JavaScript module pattern (which
obviously came later) feels more like Perl 5 objects to me. Likewise for some
Lisp and Scheme object systems that make use of innate closure support to
build the object system from primitives rather than building it in--Perl
objects are effectively hashes with almost no new core language features
(bless, and the new special variable @ISA, primarily).

