Re^3: Perl 5.10: switch statement demo

in reply to Re^2: Perl 5.10: switch statement demo
in thread Perl 5.10: switch statement demo

I guess that's kind of my point. The really useful and powerful things in todays computing industry like Perl, UNIX, even RISC processors all merely provide you with a basic set of tools and rely on you (the user) to put the simple tools together to make a useful mechanism.

Stuff like adding a named "switch" statement or needing a "when" keyword just complicates it unnecessarily IMO.

I had a discussion about this with an Oracle DBA. Needless to say we maintained our differences of opinion.

"The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why." -- `man perl`

Comment on Re^3: Perl 5.10: switch statement demo

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Re^4: Perl 5.10: switch statement demo by robin (Chaplain) on Dec 20, 2007 at 21:18 UTC
Well, I wasn't really trying to make a polemical point. You just gave me a convenient excuse to draw attention to a feature of the switch implementation that I thought people might be interested in hearing about. :-) Needless to say, though, I don't agree with you. If I did, then I wouldn't have implemented the switch feature, presumably! It sounds odd to me to hear Perl described as a "simple tool". What I like about it is precisely the opposite: the fact that it's rich and interesting, and usually has More Than One Way To Do It. Java is a simple language, but it's difficult to write a useful Java program that is simple. Perl is not a simple language, but it is a language in which it's possible to write simple programs.	[reply]

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Re^4: Perl 5.10: switch statement demo
by robin (Chaplain) on Dec 20, 2007 at 21:18 UTC

Needless to say, though, I don't agree with you. If I did, then I wouldn't have implemented the switch feature, presumably! It sounds odd to me to hear Perl described as a "simple tool". What I like about it is precisely the opposite: the fact that it's rich and interesting, and usually has More Than One Way To Do It.

Java is a simple language, but it's difficult to write a useful Java program that is simple. Perl is not a simple language, but it is a language in which it's possible to write simple programs.

[reply]

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