[vox-tech] hold on to your hats - perl vs python

[Micah Cowan]

Rod Roark writes:
 > On Friday 19 July 2002 11:49 pm, Micah Cowan wrote:
 > > ... What is particularly disturbing is the amount of Perl code which
 > > is not only illegible, but also quite poorly designed...
 > 
 > All programming languages, like human languages, can be (and
 > unfortunately usually are) used poorly.
 > 
 > To digress a bit... all this discussion about the merits of 
 > different languages is amusing to me.  We might as well 
 > argue over whether English, Russian or Swahili is "better".
 > Over the years I've become quite language-agnostic.

As I have earlier said, so am I.  However, I don't believe the
comparison to whether various human-spoken languages are "better" is
accurate, since we have not yet stooped to the point of claiming one
is "better" than another. And I see nothing wrong with discussing
relative merits or shortcomings of human-languages in the same way
we've been discussing awk/Perl/Python.

For instance, English is a hideously complicated language which tends
to be very inconsistent (breaks most of its own rules). However, it
offers the ability to distinguish certain tenses which don't exist in
other languages - e.g., Japanese doesn't distinguish between "saw",
"has seen", "had seen"; and Chinese (Mandarin) doesn't even
distinguish present or past tense - however, several languages have
much more granular tense-distinctions in comparison to English. But
they doubtless have their own flaws (though I tend to think that few
languages are quite as flawed as English).

:) :)

 > In the final analysis, doing a good job with any of them is 
 > rare enough, and a thing to be admired.

Amen to that!

-Micah