http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=355641


in reply to Perl as Language

C is to Perl as Latin is to English
I disagree. C is far from a dead language, and C has orders of a magnitude more "speakers" than Perl has. In fact, if you take two programmers, the language they most likely share common knowledge of will be C - just like the English will be the most likely language two people share common knowledge of.

C is to Perl like English is to Esperanto.

Abigail

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Re^2: Perl as Language
by adrianh (Chancellor) on May 22, 2004 at 22:41 UTC
    C is to Perl like English is to Esperanto.

    Surely Esperanto would be Python - regular simple grammar, only one way to do it, etc.

    Perl would be more like Klingon (looked down on by those who prefer the syntactic purity of Esperanto - but actually has more speakers :-)

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      Perl would be more like Klingon (looked down on by those who prefer the syntactic purity of Esperanto - but actually has more speakers :-)

      Man, that just made my afternoon.

      --rjray

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      More people speak Klingon than Esperanto? *scoff*
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        I take it you've never been to a Star Trek Convention. Many people speak Klingon.
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        More people speak Klingon than Esperanto? *scoff*

        You're right. I find that it's an urban myth.

        My bad.

        Bondeziroj

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      The problem is that no one uses Esperanto.

      Graciliano M. P.
      "Creativity is the expression of the liberty".

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        The problem is that no one uses Esperanto.

        Tio estas malvera.

        Fakte, hieraŭ mi revenis de kvintaga esperanta kunveno. Se neniu uzas Esperanton, mi ŝatas scii kiun lingvon vi pensas ke la homoj parolis tie. :)

        Takso antaŭ jardekon estis ke Esperanto havas 2 milionojn da parolantoj. Sed verŝane nun estas multe pli.

        That is absolutely false.

        In fact, I returned yesterday from a 5 day Esperanto convention. If no one uses Esperanto, I would like to know which language you think the people there spoke. :)

        An estimation of a decade ago was that Esperanto had 2 million speakers. But there are probably many more by now.

        Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', plp_site => 'plp.juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap' }

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      So which one of you PM can actually speak one or both of Esperanto and Klingon?
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Re: Re: Perl as Language
by DrHyde (Prior) on May 24, 2004 at 08:02 UTC
    Latin too is far from dead, I find my knowledge of Latin to be most useful. As for programmers' lingua franca being C - the shared tongue of educated people throughout Europe was Latin until comparitively recently.
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In Section Meditations