Re: What's so unique about Perl?

[Anonymous Monk]

Perl isn't simple, or elegant, or theoretically brilliant.

It's ugly, awkward, and arcane, but it sure gets work done.

It's easy to write perl code quickly. It's easy to get that fast, 90% solution working in a few minutes.

Perl is essentially executable pseudo-code; with all the advantages and disadvantages that such a lack of rigour brings.

Perl makes ad-hoc data structures easy; you can often code up a perl program in the time in takes to map out all the header files for the data structures in C. Writing a perl version that verifies that the pattern and data types of the structures are being maintained, on the other hand, is a lot more work, and a lot of runtime typechecking.

People like the way that there's more than one way to code Perl. They ignore the resulting implication that there's multiple ways to have to maintain perl.

Perl is nicest to work with when you don't have to work with other people's code. They probably didn't document it, and it's probably a horrible mess of maps, greps, ternary operators within ternary operators, and an embedded finite state machine that is really only in there because the author wanted a chance to try out all those neat formalisms from university. Worse yet, you'll only be authorized to change a few lines here and there (because it's now "production code"), and you'll wander through a Byzantine maze of your predecessor's making for the rest of your corporate life. But I'm not bitter. Honest.

Perl is very good for one offs, replacing shell scripts, and other small scale tasks. It only scales well to larger projects when all the developers are willing to put together a lot of extra discipline, care, and gentlemen's agreements before the system can be trusted to work together at all well.

Perl is quite good for getting simple things done fast. It doesn't scale terribly well, but it usually doesn't need to. It's not the perfect languages for all situations, but it's reasonably good for most tasks, much of the time.

That's why I say Perl is good.