Re: virii

[Thatcher Ulrich <tu@tulrich.com>]

* Richard Cobbe <cobbe@airmail.net>:
>  
>  Basically, here's my working definition of technical superiority:
>  how much effort does it take me to accomplish a particular task in
>  language X?  If I can accomplish this task in language X with half
>  the effort that I can in language Y, then I'll claim that X is
>  better than Y -- for that task.
>  
>  In my experience, Perl loses this kind of test far more frequently
>  than it wins.

I agree with your definition; my conclusions are different but of
course this will always be an individual thing.

>  As far as running well on every platform, have you checked out some
>  of the commercially available LISP compilers?  They've got
>  implementations for several major platforms, including Win32 and
>  several flavors of Unix.

Commercial is right out, if I'm looking for a Perl replacement.  (I
need to run scripts on a wide and everchanging array of machines, and
also I use scripts in open-source projects.)

>  If you'd prefer free software, check out
>  <http://www.plt-scheme.org/>, which runs more-or-less identically
>  on Win32, MacOS, and Unix/Linux.  (The only differences tend to be
>  in necessarily system-dependent things, like shared libraries,
>  filesystems, and UI controls.)

Here are a few reasons I don't use Common Lisp or Scheme in place of
Perl:

* bewildering array of dialects; the "best" Scheme changes over time,
  and despite the ANSI standard they tend to be incompatible (Scheme,
  that is; I haven't used enough CL to know)

* nothing to compete with CPAN, or even many of Perl's built in handy
  tools (regexps, pack/unpack)

* my C++-oriented colleagues (and I, for that matter) have an easier
  time deciphering Perl scripts

-- 
Thatcher Ulrich
http://tulrich.com



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