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In one of my classes (college student here), we're writing programs that require a lot of matrix math. The professor said we can use any language we want but strongly advised us to use Matlab. Consequently, everyone in the class has opted to use Matlab or C++.... except me. As a student, I can't afford the $100 for the "reduced price" student edition of Matlab to use it for just one class. Also, I'm in love with perl.
When I told the professor of my decision, both he and the TA mocked me for it, trying to actually tell me that perl is only for text parsing. I ended up going ahead and doing the first project in Perl, and was penalized for it...
My question is for anyone that opts to use perl in any field dominated by other languages. Does anyone else encounter ignorant stereotypes and criticism of perl?
It's too bad that companies that have a stake in a particular language will spend so much money ensuring that new programmers will learn in their language. Both Mathworks (Matlab's creator) and Microsoft donate so much money and free software to my university. On a funny side note, Apple gives free Macintoshes to the school, so the lab technicians have to install all kinds of crazy software to get the free programs to run on the free Macs. |
Re: Stereotypes about perl
by exussum0 (Vicar) on Feb 24, 2004 at 05:45 UTC
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My question is for anyone that opts to use perl in any field dominated by other languages. Does anyone else encounter ignorant stereotypes and criticism of perl?
Every tool has its use right? While perl is well known for doing text parsing, just like c++ and java for business or oop related solutions, there is no reason I can't write a compiler in perl for my own language and to run it.
Having said that, can you find out why you specifically were penalized? If you can find someone who has a similarly laid out solution, you may be able to argue that these two are similar, yours and someone else's... why does yours receive a lower mark?
The other side of it is, it's a harsh world. i've been given lower grades due to my ethnicity, when I've done better than my fellow students on exams, participated a lot and what not, and get full letter grades. Sometimes, you just have to live with the ignorance.
I've heard perl to be messy, convoluded or not powerful. But you know what their problem is when they don't give you specific problems with a language that are factual and give you opinions? Their gnorance. For instance, your professor, or someone says, perl is only good at text parsing. Provide proof that it's good at other things, and you'll prove them by negating their argument. Point them at all the neat algorithmic and matrix math stuff. Show them all the biology related stuff. And if they refuse, just move on.
When you get somewhere in life, assuming you are not a systems architect or designer now, you will have this experience and the wisdom to say, "Well, I used a language once, perl, c, ruby.. something, and it was descriminated against because of some popular belief. Let me find out the facts."
I used to be a funny character, now I'm just 4 bits.
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The other side of it is, it's a harsh world. i've been given lower grades due to my ethnicity, when I've done better than my fellow students on exams, participated a lot and what not, and get full letter grades. Sometimes, you just have to live with the ignorance.
Sorry, I just can't let this stand.
Either you have a provable case on this, with objective facts, that can help get that professor fired, or what you're doing is walking around with a chip on your shoulder.
Did you take these ethnic discriminations to a review board? Or did you
just whine about them to your fellow students?
I could run around all day and say "I'm not getting business because I don't have a college degree, and that's unfair because I have the work experience instead!" And guess what? It'd be pretty much unprovable, and therefore actually pretty much irrelevant. Instead, I just do my best, and hope that my clients line up outside my door. That's life. Take responsibility for the entire experience. Don't demean others for your actions or attributes.
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Did you take these ethnic discriminations to a review board? Or did you just whine about them to your fellow students?
Yes, I did take this to the department who refused to hear the case directly, and I did file a complaint which I couldn't always follow up and take time off just so I can take care of this. I basically suffered the "you need to take a lot of time out of your life to get this taken care of" which I couldn't. I worked 40 hours a week and took 16 credits (5 of your UK modules out there). I lived on my own and brought myself up from my own damned boot straps. I missed at most 1 class, I averaged 90's, did all my HW and participated in class. And I got a C+ from a professor (who hasn't even finished their master's yet) for the programming course while others who didn't do much better or worse than me got B+'s.
That's life. Take responsibility for the entire experience. Don't demean others for your actions.
Excuse you, but I have taken responsibility for my actions. I lived out the stupid .com boom, going to college and living on my own with very little help thank you very much. I did have the objective facts. I went out of my way to do the best so I could stay out of achedemic probation. I've been yelled at, beat up and repressed for things I didn't even do! Just because I'm half black, or get mistaken for middle eastern (9/11), or am to white of a black person.
You don't know me and what I had to go through to get where I am. So you can keep your judgements of me and take that chip of your shoulder before you make your judgements on me. Your idealistic little world does NOT exist.
-not sorry this is a flame,
your friendly monk.
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Never thought that I'd get into this here, but here are my very little 2 cents worth.
Only this: I have had instances in my life where the truth of the situation was hard for other people to swallow (people could not believe that one person could treat another so badly). Because of this they tended to negate my experience (oh you're exagerating, it wasn't really that, it was something else). This caused me no end of pain.
From this I learned a very important lesson. If someone tells me something about their own self, where I know nothing about the situation, I never assume that they are exagerating. (it doesn't mean i'll run out and buy a car because the salesman says he needs the money).
It is important to be believed, unless the unbeliever knows for certain (or at least reasonably certain) that there is cause for disbelief.
This isn't about the big issue of how often or how prevalent discrimination is, it's about simply accepting, at face value, a statement someone has made about their life.
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Either you have a provable case on this, with objective facts, that can help get that professor fired, or what you're doing is walking around with a chip on your shoulder.
Since when is a provable case with objective facts enough to do anything? Let's see, Rodney King, Amidou Diallo, countless lynched black folks, and so on. Some of those must have had provable cases with objective facts, but that isn't necessarily enough cut through a thick layer of racism.
Maybe if you're a white guy, you can count on objective facts (or maybe not, if the other person has more money/power/friends/etc). And as a white person, I don't think you're in a good position to be telling someone that they have a chip on their shoulder. Lots of non-white people have damn good reasons for believing that they weren't being treated fairly, and to belittle that as "a chip on their shoulder" is incredibly offensive. But you simply cannot walk a mile in those shoes.
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Well, he said I won't be penalized next time if I have detailed comments for every line...
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So if you read between the lines, you were penalized because though your solution may have worked, he didn't understand it well enough to know if you were using sound methods.
Think of it like being penalized for using sloppy handwriting such that the professor had a hard time reading your handwritten essay exam. You may be making great points in perfect grammar, but if the intended audience can't decipher it, you're out of luck.
Not that Perl is sloppy to you or I. But if someone handed you an assignment written in Lisp would you know how to grade it? (assuming you don't know Lisp).
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If you are worried about the points, I'd ask him if you commented more to his liking if he would re-grade it. Sometimes professors can be nice that way... other times they aren't nice but worth a try if it was a lot of points, probably not worth it if it was just a few points (out of a lot)
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by shotgunefx (Parson) on Feb 24, 2004 at 06:57 UTC
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Prior to your post, I didn't even know about PDL. I'm reading about it now, and it sounds like exactly what I need.
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The book "Mastering Algorithms with Perl" may also help you. It talks about PDL some.
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For almost anything math related, PDL is the right choice in perl. Where I work, we've used PDL for harmonic analysis and linear regression on large data sets. We recently added some graphing capabilities that utilize PDL+GD . We are also exploring adding neural net predictive capabilities to our toolset using PDL. Hard core math-types balk at perl as being "slow", but PDL is anything but. It adds much of the same functionality as you would find in matlab to perl (The big advantage that matlab has over PDL are those toolboxes that you can get for matlab. PDL has nothing analogous yet, but given CPAN, it's only a matter of time). Where perl really wins is getting the data into and out of whatever format you need for your calculations. Matlab, though sophisticated, is still almost as clumsy as Fortran in this regard.
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by tilly (Archbishop) on Feb 24, 2004 at 16:45 UTC
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Is your goal to be right, or to get the grade?
If your professor and TA are biased against Perl, using it starts you with 2 strikes against you. Whether or not it is fair.
Furthermore your professor and TA are right in that Perl has a lot of overhead for complex math calculations. If I was doing a lot of numerical manipulation and performance mattered, then Perl would not be my first (or second..) choice. Part of the art of choosing the right tool for the job is knowing when your favorite tool isn't it.
I would second thor's suggestion that you try Octave. It is basically a GPLed version of Matlab. | [reply] |
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Furthermore your professor and TA are right in that Perl has a lot of overhead for complex math calculations. If I was doing a lot of numerical manipulation and performance mattered, then Perl would not be my first (or second..) choice. Part of the art of choosing the right tool for the job is knowing when your favorite tool isn't it.
Yes but no where is it made clear that Perl isn't the right tool for the job. Hell, I thought think Perl would be even better for this particular purpose as it lets you concentrate on the algorith itself. Since it's purely educational, it doesn't matter if the code compiles/runs in 1 second or 5 seconds, you can use the same algorithms and techniques in any language.
Now, if he had to do large amounts of mathematical operations in a really small amount of time such as breaking cyphers and so forth then I might agree that perl is not the right choice. But for writing basic algorithms to learn them, I have yet to see anything that suggests perl isn't the best choice.
Updated: Added "small amount of time" to further clarify my position.
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Let me make it clearer why Perl is the wrong tool for the job.
The exercise that had to be coded involved matrix calculations.
In Matlab or Octave, matrices are native datatypes, and a variety of useful functions are available for manipulating them. Sure, it is easy enough to write a Perl implementation of matrices and basic matrix operations. But the notation that you will wind up with will be more verbose, and you will be open to the possibility that you are getting wrong answers because your routines are wrong. Furthermore when you get to more complex operations, you won't know enough to, for instance, come up with a good way to compute the eigenvalues of a matrix. Matlab already has that done for you. (I can find ways to compute it. I doubt that I would do it nearly as efficiently and accurately as Matlab does. A student just learning the subject would not be expected to do as well as I can.)
There is great value in only writing the algorithms that you need without having to reinvent the wheel.
In Perl you can resolve that problem if you know about PDL. But PDL is an installation dependency that whoever is grading you doesn't know, and has to go through. And furthermore they don't know whether to trust it (is the bug yours, or PDLs?). Also if you run into trouble, they can't help you with it since they don't know it, and they likewise don't know if the bug is with your code, PDL or your understanding of PDL's API. There is a huge advantage to using tools that people around you are able to help you with. Perl isn't that tool.
Now C++ shares some of the disadvantages that Perl does. My guess is, though, that there is a standard math library that has been provided for C++ people. Any language with the right library gets back some of the advantages that Matlab has. If the instructors are familiar with it, it gets back most of the rest. (I would consider Matlab a better tool than C++ for this exercise - less conceptual overhead.)
Furthermore for a Perl fanatic, there is another advantage of not using Perl. It is very easy to become overattached to your favorite tool. Yes, we all know that you can pick up more tools, and skills should transfer. But making that transfer takes practice at translating from thinking in language X into thinking in language Y. Therefore forcing yourself to use a different language from time to time is a good way to make sure that YOU have the valuable skill of adapting to a new language/environment.
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by thor (Priest) on Feb 24, 2004 at 06:00 UTC
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by flyingmoose (Priest) on Feb 24, 2004 at 16:12 UTC
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Simply put...some people don't know any better. I was at a bioinformatics presentation yesterday where the term "using Java instead of some crap Perl" came up. I wanted to tell the guy "yes, you can write crap in all languages", but few understand this. Why? I don't know. I write quality code in all languages -- except languages I'm not familiar with. My guess is many folks have seen the work of inexperienced Perl coders who lacked a little discipline or training, since Perl tends to have a lower barrier to entry (but a much higher barrier to mastery!) as compared with something like C++.
The worst Perl stereotype I see is that "Perl is line noise" or "all Perl code is unmaintainable", but this is clearly just that -- look at all the great work here, a lot of extremely brilliant folks, and the coding (at least to me) seems more in line with the annals of Lisp (and other A.I. languages) and more esoteric OO (not-confined by the limits of Java), making Perl feel like a great choice for academic-type coding.
I think the only way to fight this is education. I'm not a language bigot, but I do find myself hating languages that are full of them, hence my crusade against using Java everywhere -- especially where it is not the best choice. Like in that presentation where an XML-based system was being used, but the middleware was exclusively java. Why? No need -- it should support many tools.
I like folks that keep an open mind. Just learn a bit from your TA, but don't believe him when Perl is just for text processing. Text processing is less than 1/8th of what I do with Perl.
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I was at a bioinformatics presentation yesterday where the term "using Java instead of some crap Perl" came up.
I'm actually very surprised at this.. working in a Bioinformatics area.. we've used Perl quite a bit. Granted, we also use other languages such as ASP, ColdFusion, and Java. I still think you use whatever is best for the job. We don't use Perl for our websites, but it's quite useful in other areas. I always thought Perl was a big item for Bioinformatics... maybe the times are changing..
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I didn't think the speaker was very sharp, but I didn't challenge him on the Perl since the audience was (ugh) lacking in Perl experience and laughed at his Perl jokes. Well, he was missing other questions too (he couldn't answer my question about how fiting a model to data in a biased way might violate the scientific method of hypothesis testing through data collection). This java talk was mostly in regard to the "caBIG" (cancer bioinformatics grid -- essentially web services and not technically a distributed computing system) and he was discussing how they were replacing a bunch of random things with Java. The part that didn't drive is that good grids are language agnostic. He also stated there bascially was no room for more Comp. Sci folks in the field now, which I also didn't believe. In fact, I left a little early to get some food -- he was just infuriating me with his language bias :)
This would be another meditation, I guess, but is bioinformatics actually open to new programmers (compared with "pure software"), particularly in Perl? And how much emphasis is actually placed on biology experience? I was expecting tremendous love of Perl in that room, and what I saw instead was a tremendous love of Java for the wrong reasons. Ex: Java w/ matlab. Now there is a cast-heavy bloated syntax I don't want to have to deal with when doing math!
I don't think times are changing, it's just that some folks have this bad taste in their mouths about Perl, and well...some people are just stupid!
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by bakunin (Scribe) on Feb 24, 2004 at 09:35 UTC
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Programming is about possibilities. And I couldn't agree more with sporty: We are living in a harsh world; most people cannot even stand the idea of "possibilities" and "differences".
The professor and the TA mentioned are only two examples of many. But their behaviour shouldn't be perplexing considering the loans and donations given my big corporations. On the other hand, one should realize that most universities are producing employees. And the market demands some tools(knowledge some calls it) to be garnered by "graduates." Matlab is a good example of such a tool.
I also want to point out a hardware issue. Physics and engineering departments do a lot of number crunching by using specific hardware connected to a computer. These hardware equipments come with special C/C++ libraries. And even there Perl gives us options, but I have never seen one trying.
To the stereotypes: In our way of saying TIAMTOWTDI. And for those who thinks Perl is for text parsing, I would show CPAN. I myself occasionally parse text, and use Perl 15 hours a day.
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by stvn (Monsignor) on Feb 24, 2004 at 17:12 UTC
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My question is for anyone that opts to use perl in any field dominated by other languages. Does anyone else encounter ignorant stereotypes and criticism of perl?
I actually work in a field where perl used to be the lingua franca, but i still hear bias against perl sometimes. I build web-based intranet applications (which were practically invented with perl). Some of our clients are all for a Linux/Apache/mod_perl/MySQL solution (usually cause the price is right). But others balk at the idea of using anything other than a bought and paid for solution (usually MS based) (Of course, when you pay for it that means you have someone to yell at when it breaks, which can be an important sometimes).
Perl has a bad rep sometimes, I think the infamous Matt's Script Archive and the alot of massive spaghetti-code-style sys-admin/build scripts are partially to blame. But as we all know, a truely "talented" programmer can write really really really bad code in any language. Perl also was kind of slow to catch up on the OO thing, and to this day many people don't even know there is such a thing as OO Perl. Perl is experiencing a revivial of sorts with Bioinformics because it is the right tool for the job (text parsing ;-).
But the fact is you will likely find bias everywhere you go about everything you can possibly think of for the rest of your life. Humans are very opinionated animals and have a propensity to try shove their opinions down the throats of other humans. If your teacher downgraded you only for using perl, he is an ass. But i doubt that was the sole reason (no offense to you or your code), but still you may find it useful/informative to discuss it with him.
-stvn
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by jdtoronto (Prior) on Feb 25, 2004 at 05:29 UTC
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Allow me now to put on my professors hat. (Well, where I come from we only call the head of a department Professor, but hey!). No, I am not currently teaching, but in the past I have taught in electronics, mathematics and physics, in all of which I am well qualified.
Sadly I consider many of my academic colleagues (but by no means all) shockingly undereducated and capable of exhibiting a considerable lack of academic rigour. If he said you may use 'any language' then that is the end of it. In some Universities mentioing a preference for a commercial product would actually earn him a warning from the Dean or the ethics committee. Neither is ignorance any defence for his action, if that were the case.
HOWEVER - you must remember one thing. The vast majority of those teaching undergraduate courses will not thank you for rocking the boat! They are not (in their own ever so humble opinions) there to encourage you to explore, to push back any boundaries or to innovate. They want little if anything more than to get through their teaching load as quickly and as easily as possible to make available as much time for their own research or consulting activities. Be a renegade (I always have been!) but be prepared to fight the laziness and prejudice of your teachers. Sadly, over the last thirty or so years University undergraduate teaching in North America is being treated more and more like high school than university learning.
jdtoronto
PS Go and have a look at PDL - the Perl Data Language at http://pdl.perl.org. It is actually quite useful and I find it has far fewer bugs and idiocies than Matlab for the DSP simulation that I have been using it for. | [reply] |
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The vast majority of those teaching undergraduate courses will not thank you for rocking the boat!
in the university I went to, it was the contrary ... we were not taught perl on purpose : because the teachers knew we could learn perl by ourselves, that perldoc is well done and the community of users is really nice and helpful :)
I had the luck to learn how to learn, rather than learning static fixed stuffs ... Teachers wanted us to learn how to improve ourselves, and they succeeded in giving us the taste to always look for new and different ways to work :)
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by gmpassos (Priest) on Feb 24, 2004 at 20:26 UTC
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First you can do everything with Perl or through it.
One of the wrong stereotypes that I saw here in the University is that Perl is just a shell script language. But this was from a professor that saw Perl one time 10 years ago, and saw that it works fine for shell.
Also I saw other peoples that think that Perl is just for CGI, or Perl is CGI, and is only for that. And was also because they saw CGI 5 years ago and saw that CGI is Perl.
Also I saw other peoples saying that Perl is only BioPerl. And again is because they saw Perl working for that, and think that is only for that.
Well, next time that someone that think something about Perl, but don't know nothing about it, says something wrong. Just show 2 things, CPAN and all it's modules and what is possible to do with them (everything), and the ports page:
http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html
Than ask it if the other language have all this modules, and works in all this ports!
Now about speed, well, Perl have one of the best speeds, just lose for binary code. One thing I can tell you easy, Perl is 10 times faster than Java. ;-P
Now about your math work, well, take a look at http://search.cpan.org. I can guaranty that you will find something that you need.
And don't forget that Perl works, is pratical, fast and free. Also has one of the biggest communities of developers. Also your code will work in your Mac, Linux, Win32, etc...! ;-P
Note that I say that as a Java consultant, IT consultant and technology researcher. Soo, I need know very well the world around and all the different technologies. And Perl as a language that really does the job is the best.
Recently I have got 2 projects of US$ 100,00, to be build with a team of 3 people (yes, both projects). The same 2 projects were be made by 2 other teams of 10 people, for 1 year in Java. Soo, this 20 experts in Java, in 365, can't make the system work as they need. Soo, I show to the client that in 30 days my team was able to do all and more than what they did in 1 year, and also better. Soo, they lost the 2 projects, we send their work to the trash, and we got the 2 projects, that now are well done. Just because we use Perl, and my team have a lot of tools and technologies built to make the development faster and better. Soo, the option of Perl be open, and 100% malleable, is much more important than a language that "say" that is "stable and for big systems".
Graciliano M. P.
"Creativity is the expression of the liberty".
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by jacques (Priest) on Feb 24, 2004 at 16:56 UTC
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Perl is not liked in the academic world, with very few exceptions. For example, Perl is taught at the University I attend, but the person who teaches it doesn't know it well at all and no one else is using it. Essentially, Perl is mocked. Why? Because Java and other languages are pushed by big companies who have a stake in their use at the college level. For the same reason, Microsoft donates huge amounts of software to Universities, in the hope of indoctrinating programmers at an early age. Poor Perl just doesn't have a voice. Perl could become a better language, but what is needed for Perl to make inroads at this level is corporate support. | [reply] |
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If I can plug a fellow NC State grad (who probably posts here -- if you're here John speak up), NCSU didn't have a Perl course, and an undergrad (heck, a sophomore!) stepped up with his elite Perl skills and they let him teach a 1 credit hour class. Great stuff.
I see Perl mostly mocked from OO folks, so reminding them that Perl has OO and showing them to CPAN may help.
I also remember to bring up the phrases "ultimate glue language" and "swiss army chainsaw" as much as possible. Mentioning XS bindings, Inline::C, LWP, and the robot classes can't hurt either. Let them know all the things that Perl can do that their favorite language can't do in a non-trivial away.
I think the academics who like Lisp and other functional languages would be happy with Perl. It's the OO types that need work. Perl proves styles can be mixed -- it's sort of post-modern mixed-media voodoo, and yep, that's threatening to a professor or student unwilling to take the leap and throw away preconceptions.
I don't think Perl needs to become "a better language" by any means. Perl6 will help the OO model, true, but it's rock solid as a language now. Java isn't in Universities due to corporations -- when NCSU switched, Java didn't have huge industry acceptance and app servers weren't that common -- it made a good *teaching* language, because it enforced OO principles and eliminated pointer-manipulation that a lot of weaker students couldn't handle. Perl isn't a good teaching language, hence at the undergrad level, it might be mocked. However, talk with your AI professor about functional concepts and more abstract stuff, and I bet he would be more willing to tolerate Perl than your data structures or CS1/CS2 professors. Also your Operating Systems folks will probably appreciate it since it can fork and manipulate pipes, etc -- just like C. There is a rigid part of university education that enforces OO dogma -- some of it is right, some of it is not -- it is your job to filter it out and extract what you can -- but what is taught to you is not neccessarily gospel.
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My own school (a two-year tech college) recently ditched VB in favor of Perl for its Network Specialist program. Where universities are typically houses of intelecutual aditudes (which has its place), tech schools have a "get stuff done" aditude (which also has its place). Perl may make a lot more sense for tech schools, especially for a networking program, which is going to turn out a lot of future administrators, not full-fledged programmers.
OTOH, I can see the argument for Java over Perl in the more intelectual environment of a full university. However, I think Python and Ruby are even better choices.
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: () { :|:& };:
Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by jonadab (Parson) on Feb 25, 2004 at 02:42 UTC
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The professor said we can use any language we want but strongly advised us to use Matlab.
When a professor strongly advises something, it is
generally safe to assume you will probably be graded
down if you don't take the advice. When he said you
*can* use any language you want, that means he won't
flunk you outright for it. What costs more, Matlab,
or the tuition for the course? Think of it like
buying a textbook for the course, only it's software.
If you want to make a point, turn in side-by-side
Matlab and Perl results. (Not knowing Matlab, I
don't know whether this will effectively make the
point you want, but if it won't then there isn't
a better way to make it either probably.) If you
just want a good grade, take the professor's advice.
;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print
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If you're going to efffectively deal with this teacher and continue using Perl, you're going to have to do additional work. Handing in a Matlab version of one or two assigments, along with Perl versions, is a good start. You also need to annotate the code, explaining where you've made different choices for what you're doing, and why, according to the possibilities inherent in the tools. If you can do this in a firm yet respectful manner, you may be able to win him over.
You also need to make sure you aren't getting around the guts of the assignment by using special features of Perl. If you're asked to implement pattern matching and you do it by using Perl regexes, you probably deserve to be failed, since the assigment is to implement, not to use someone else's implementation.
adamsj
They laughed at Joan of Arc, but she went right ahead and built it. --Gracie Allen
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by RandomWalk (Beadle) on Feb 26, 2004 at 05:54 UTC
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I don't know how honest this student is being, but I do know Matlab has a place in the classroom and that it has some qualities that a lot of people here surely admire.
Matlab started life as an interface to preexisting Fortran routines. The point was to avoid reinventing the wheel and to keep easy things easy. Later, I think, Matlab came with a simple shell-like interface, one I'm sure the PDL developers owe something to, and a scripting language. This was nice because the scripts ran like native Matlab functions. Suddenly everybody was sharing scripts--like Perl's modules today.
There were other nice things that Matlab introduced but you get my point: if you can reach higher with Perl, you are standing on someone's shoulders.
(Apologies to Newton and to everyone who knows this story better than I do.) | [reply] |
Re: Stereotypes about perl
by artist (Parson) on Feb 24, 2004 at 18:56 UTC
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If it is not a pure programming class, you should have choice of programming language. As long as it produces right results within reasonable time, you should be fine.
The correctness of the program should really be tested with various input to see if required output can be obtained. GUI programming is a different thing where 'sometime' look and feel becomes more subjective issue rather than objective.
You should not be penalized for using 'Perl'. It's your choice of language and you feel comfortable with. If possible you should talk to higher-up about this issue. They should know that Perl is feely available and does the work what is required.
artist | [reply] |
Re: Stereotypes about perl
by JSchmitz (Canon) on Feb 25, 2004 at 15:25 UTC
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I have heard this over and over about Perl being only used for text processing and it usually comes from someone that has NO real world IT experience. Not only is Perl incredibly useful for system administration, automation of tasks, web stuff, text processing AND a whole lot more but tons of Enterprise class application stuff is written in Perl these days. Veritas Netbackup, Cluster Server and Volume manager and NetIQ have all the binaries packed in Perl. Not to mention AutoSys by CA, HP openview, there are really too many to name. The people that say this nonsense always spend most of their time in a classroom going by what they read in books and have never set foot in a real datacenter with multi-domain systems such as Exxon or Texaco or Shell. If they had they would know that in many big DC's Perl automates many tasks and is invaluable. Matlab?? talk about a niche language - I would laugh in their face if I were you
tell them Mac OSX ships with Perl..
cheers,
Jeffery | [reply] |
Re: Stereotypes about perl
by ambrus (Abbot) on Feb 24, 2004 at 20:57 UTC
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I (mis)used perl for 3d graphics last time.
You can get the source code from http://www.math.bme.hu/~ambrus/pu/tri.
You may not understand it as it lacks comments.
I do not develop this program any further.
It outputs a ppm.
Note: this was for university class too.
Update. Let me complete the story. I wrote the thingy in Perl because I did not have Mathematica at home.
Later, I converted the program to Mathematica in the university, so what I've really given as a homework was
a Mathematica program and an article explaining it.
(In my case, however, it was obligatory to use Mathematica.)
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by blue_cowdawg (Monsignor) on Apr 08, 2004 at 18:53 UTC
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Does anyone else encounter ignorant stereotypes and criticism of perl?
It has happend to me. I just shrug it off and go on.
No need to let it ruin your day or even your career.
There are bigots of every stripe. I am considered a
fanatic where I work because I refuse to use the
"corporate standard build" on my laptop which
consists of WinXp. I refuse to knuckle under to the
evil empire and use their
crapware.
I once, believe it or not, was rejected as a candidate for
a position with a very prominent company because I refused
to call Perl something other than a programming language
because the interviewer's opinion was that a programming
language by definitiion was strongly typed. She felt that
by listing Perl as a programming language on my resume
that I was misrepresenting fact somehow.
I frequently tell people that "if the only tool
in your toolbox is a hammer then all your problems are
going to look like nails." I have always been a
believer in using the right tool for the job. If Perl
is the right tool for the job and about 90% of the time
for me it is then I use it. I also use PHP, C, C++, Bash
scripting and yes even BASIC. I also code in PIC, 6509,
8088, 8051 and 680000 assembler code. As a matter of fact
I have been known to write Perl scripts to generate
assembler code for certain tasks.
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Re: Stereotypes about perl
by talexb (Chancellor) on Feb 27, 2004 at 18:08 UTC
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If you were penalized for using a novel approach to complete an assignment, I'd go over the professor's head and have a discussion with the dean.
This shows poor judgement on the part of the professor .. he encouraged everyone to use Matlab but left the choice up to you. My sympathies.
Alex / talexb / Toronto
Life is short: get busy!
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