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Re: Perl vs Python vs ....



In message <[🔎] 6EBhsQqUcsB@khms.westfalen.de>, Kai Henningsen writes:
>That's a problem, but it's not the problem I meant. For difficult to  
>parse, well, compare these two lines:
>   a =~ s/some/thing...
>   b = c/d
>Very bad syntax design, that.

There's always s,some,thing, or s|some|thing| or whatever.

>Either you're trying to do different things, or you have a different idea  
>of readable. Maybe both.
>Note that I have no such problems with, say, assemblers, C, Pascal, REXX,  
>Lisp ... to name a few.

I've written programs in Perl (often making heavy use of regexps and
string handling) and gone for months without looking at the code, and
then had no problems figuring out what I needed to do when I went back
to modify the code.

Of course, this only proves that I am suspicious of the supposed
self-documenting capabilities of _any_ language, and thus comment and
document religiously.

>It's success did not depend on technical merits. Ever.

I'd disagree with that.  At the introduction of the IBM PC, you had
DOS, the p-system and, later CP/M.  I'd take DOS over the p-system any
day.  And by the time DRI got their act together, DOS had directories.

So, in that context, it did.  Remember, it wasn't bundled.

That it was not quickly enough eclipsed so that installed base was not
a problem competition-wise is hardly MS's fault.

Of course, I have to wonder how I ended up defending DOS and
Microsoft...

Mike.
--
"Don't let me make you unhappy by failing to be contrary enough...."



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