Ask HN: Ruby Is to Perl What Scheme Is to Common Lisp? - drnewman
======
kazinator
Sorry, I can't find any angle on this analogy that would rescue some grain of
truth.

(Perl5, by the way?)

For that matter, for "X is to Y what Scheme is to Common Lisp", I'm finding it
hard to find a good X, Y that would be satisfying and enlightening.

~~~
drnewman
I guess it’s an analogy that has been in my mind for a while. Rubists are
often quite eager to distance themselves from the legacy of Perl. But, the
connection is very strong to me. In terms of design goals (programmer
happiness), and over all feel (sigils, context variables, infix conditionals)
and there’s quite a bit more I could point out.

In fact, many Perl developers where saying things like, “Ruby until Perl 6”
not long ago. The difference between two (i.e. Ruby and Perl and similarly
Scheme and Common Lisp) IMHO is that Ruby has as an additional goal of wanting
to be simple and elegant (which I would say similar to Scheme in contrast to
CL).

Whereas, the aesthetic Perl has always been after was programmer productivity
and happiness even at the expense of having the capacity to look like line
noise. As a result it’s got everything and the kitchen sink sometimes at the
expense of apparent elegance (which seems similar to CL in contrast to
Scheme).

