Re: OT: programming languages
On Sat, 28 Jun 2014 14:02:54 -0700
David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> wrote:
> On 06/28/2014 06:14 AM, slitt wrote:
> > LOL, at a client's place, I was trying to customize the
> > Perl-written Interchange web store software (don't ever use it, it's
> > an atrocity) on circa 2003 Red Hat, and had to use CPAN for a new
> > capability. That CPAN download broke the client's Vim and some other
> > softwares. It took me 2 hours to undo the damage.
>
> Only 2 hours? You're good.
>
>
> > That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with Perl.
>
> CPAN dependency hell is definitely no fun, especially when your
> distribution uses Perl internally. Some Perl applications/
> frameworks come with their own module tree (and tools to maintain
> it). Another solution is bundling, such as the Cava packager [1].
>
>
> I found Perl in 1998 and have yet to find anything I like better for
> my interests (system scripting, data munging, number crunching).
> After reading HOP [2] and SICP2 [3], I realized that most common/
> popular languages easily give you imperative and OO styles, but Perl
> also makes list and functional styles easy (and probably more). I've
> found the latter approaches to be more agreeable to my way of
> thinking (engines working on sequences of data, rather than
> geneologically-related data mutating itself), and my programs have
> become more flexible, concise, and powerful as I write/ rewrite more
> Perl code using HOP/SICP ideas. The key differentiator is the Lambda
> function ("closures") -- it gives me separation of data and
> algorithms without the constraints of OO/ interface hierarchies or
> special template syntax (although I am still tempted to use the C
> preprocessor for Log::Log4perl, benchmarking/ profiling, etc.).
>
>
> What do people like instead of Perl, and why?
>
>
> David
Hi David,
First, this isn't the slightest bit OT. A week doesn't go by where I
don't need to write either a simple script or a slightly bigger program
to make Linux do just what I want.
If you like Closures, you'll LOVE Lua. Lua has exactly one complex data
type: Tables. A Lua table is exactly like a Perl hash except a Lua
table is implemented such that, when you use it as an array (with keys
1..whatever), it's fast like an array, not slow like the lists of
key->value pairs in other languages.
The only reason I chose Python over Lua is because Python comes with a
more mature library of addons, to assure me that any project I start in
Python will get finished in Python. But IMHO, language to language, Lua
is the best there is.
Many other languages can do Closures, but IMHO Lua's got the best
Closure ease and performance among languages designed for the procedural
paradigm (in other words, like C, Perl, Python, Ruby, and unlike Scheme
or Lisp).
Try Lua.
SteveT
Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance
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