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thoughts on perl language

by Anonymous Monk
on Nov 09, 2012 at 03:07 UTC ( #1003052=perlmeditation: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??

Hi Monks,

I'd like to share some thoughts on the perl language:

I have used perl for many years. IMHO, perl is a very very beautiful language just like english is the very beautiful language amongst all of the language systems on Earth, both of which can express meanings quite concisely, richly and the most important - clearly.

The simplicity, purity, integrity, and intuitiveness of perl make it distinct from most other languages, hence worth treating as a religion. Therefore, there are monks of perl just like there are monks of religions on Earth, simply because both are going for the true meaning and value. Monk, what a sacred word! Have you heard of 'v..b' monks or 'c=>ah=>#' monks? oh, at least not for me ever.

Some languages or platform full of jumping menus and flashing icons seems very attractively 'easy-to-use' and 'user-friendly'. After people are lured and start to use such a dummy platform or languages, they will find that they have got to pay a lot more of time, effort, privacy and money. The innate shortcomings of human being such as laziness, peacockery, impatience, liking graphics are exploited. Dummy platform and languages are really for dummies.

The simplicity and purity of the designing principle of perl is CONSISTENT with the designing rules of this universe. This universe is essentially made of simplicity and unostentatiousness. perl is simple yet 'complex' and very powerful, which complies with the laws of this universe, whereas some languages and platform are seemingly 'simple' but is essentially distortedly intricate, by design. The 'complexity' and powerfulness of perl is based upon its simplicity and conciseness thus is easy to understand and use while the 'simplicity' of some languages and platform is based upon their deliberate intricateness and will inevitably lead to weakness, limitedness, and the most important --- controlledness.

Another wonderful perl principle, the tim today, is as well consistent with the designing rules of this universe, as every one is UNIQUE and have got to make his OWN way to success. Sometimes, perl could look strange just as you have soaked in low-graded languages or platform for too long.

BTW the 'elsif' in perl is great. It becomes a pronuncible word and one less keystroke than 'elseif'.

There are, however two things to worry about:

1. 'big money' can hire goons and thugs to ruin or break such a beautiful language. 2. the simplicity, purity and integrity of perl could be tainted or contaminated, unintentionally or intentionally.

May perl last to the end of this universe.

Comment on thoughts on perl language
Re: thoughts on perl language
by tobyink (Abbot) on Nov 09, 2012 at 10:36 UTC







      "English also tends to be very tolerant of extendawording."

      ++ for the embedded example :-)


      Beg your pardon? English jam-packed with irregular verbs? With what language did you compare it??? Some 370 irregular verbs with three forms to a verb?

      English has a messed up spelling due to its history, other than that it's brain-dead regular.

      Enoch was right!
      Enjoy the last years of Rome.

        I'm not entirely sure where you get the number 370 from. This website claims to have a list of 620 available to its subscribers, and I imagine that even that it not exhaustive.

        It's not about sheer numbers though. Most verbs are regular, obviously. However many of the irregular verbs also happen to be very commonly used. Take a look at this list. It's the 10 most common verbs in the English language:

        1. be
        2. have
        3. do
        4. say
        5. get
        6. make
        7. go
        8. know
        9. take
        10. see

        How many are irregular? How about all of them! Only 7 of the top 25 English verbs are regular.

        Compare that to, say, German, which happens to be one of English's closest neighbours linguistically. In German there's only one truly irregular verb, sein (to be). Other than that, all verbs fall into two categories, strong and weak, which each have their own (different, but predictable) conjugation rules. Of the top ten German verbs, one is irregular, eight are strong, and one is weak.

        Three forms to a verb? Regular ones have four (look, looks, looking, looked). Irregular ones have X forms, where X is a number perhaps less, perhaps more, or perhaps equal to four.

        There are plenty of weird things in English other than spelling. How about...

        • The verb "to dust" can mean to add dust to a surface, but also to remove dust from a surface.

        • Irregular plurals: mouse/mice, goose/geese, man/men, etc. The plural form of "sheep" is "sheep".

        • For that matter, why on earth is there no singular for the word "cattle". They're a common enough animal, and it clearly makes sense to be able to talk about them in the singular. So why do we just have this plural word "cattle"?

          There is of course "cow", but that refers exclusively to females. "Bull" refers to males, and "calf" (another irregular plural by the way, calves) to the young. There is no English word to refer to a single individual Bos primigenius without committing to its sex or age.

        • Given the two phrases "a cute little puppy" versus "a little cute puppy"; almost all native English speakers would agree that the second one sounds wrong. Virtually none of them could tell you why. :-)

          Similarly, "a nice warm bath"/"a warm nice bath"; "a red Japanese car"/"a Japanese red car"; "an old woollen scarf"/"a woollen old scarf". In each case the first is right, the second is wrong.

        • Bags of synonyms. If you know what the word "moon" means, that doesn't help you if you hear the phrase "lunar cycles".

          The main reason we have so many synonyms in English is that the language is a cut and shut combination of Low German and Norse French. So we ended up with one word inherited from German ("need") and one from French ("require") meaning exactly the same thing. We also ended up with a lot of (mostly technical) words derived directly from Latin without the French intermediary, and then to make matters worse the bloody Vikings gave us a whole bunch of other words we neither needed nor required.

          (This also explains why nobody wins the human race. English has two words spelt "race" which are pronounced exactly the same. "Race" meaning ethnicity or population comes from French; "race" meaning a speed contest comes from Norse.)

        • And I don't want to bang on about them but... the idioms. Perhaps you and I don't see eye to eye on this, but as far as deciphering the meaning of a sentence goes, even if you know the definitions of the individual words, it's not a done deal.

          On the other hand, perhaps I can see your point? After all, people learning English as a second language do seem to pick up the meaning of idioms as soon as they run into them. Maybe it's a piece of cake?!

Re: thoughts on perl language
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 11, 2012 at 00:27 UTC





      Only simplicity can build complexity; complexity only builds collapse.












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