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in reply to Re: Perl a "hot skill" according to eWeek
in thread Perl a "hot skill" according to eWeek

What's wrong with that statement? Perl clearly does have its roots in the Unix environment after all. They don't say it would be usable on Unix only - though some might misread it that way...
  • Comment on Re^2: Perl a "hot skill" according to eWeek

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Re^3: Perl a "hot skill" according to eWeek
by CountZero (Bishop) on Nov 15, 2010 at 18:41 UTC
    For sure, Perl is not "Unix based". It may have taken some inspiration from tools and paradigms which can be found (also) in Unix, but we are long past that.

    It just shows how relative all these lists are.

    CountZero

    A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

[reply]
      Yeah, I sort of scratch my head trying to figure where they come up with some of these lists sometimes, but I figure any time Perl is mentioned as being "important" or "in demand" has GOT to be a good thing. Also, seemed like a bright spot on a Monday morning, Perl getting a mention in the news, even if the accuracy was a little off.
[reply]
      It may have taken some inspiration ...
      I think it's more than just "some inspiration". For one, there's direct support (in the form of language built-ins) for a multitude of Unix system calls/commands, such as fork, exec, wait, select, kill, lstat, symlink, chmod, chown, getpwnam, etc. - only to name a few.

      The docs even clearly state Perl's Unix heritage:

      "Perl was born in Unix and can therefore access all common Unix system calls. (...)"
[reply]
        Yes, "Perl was born in Unix" and has now long grown out of that crib.

        It are such "absolute truths" which damage our beloved Perl's image, as they do not take into account the very dynamism that lies at its heart.

        Other such "truths" which spring to mind are "Perl is CGI", "Perl code is unreadable", "Perl development has stalled", "Perl is dead", ...

        At each and every opportunity we must stand united and fight them.

        CountZero

        A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

[reply]

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