note
blazar
<blockquote><i>would first like to thank everyone that has helped me with the code I am trying to hack. It is still not working but I am making a lot of progress. I realized today that Perl is "open source" I thought it was strange but now I know why it does not come with any version of Windows.</i></blockquote>
<p>It does not come with any version of Windows, because it's not [http://www.microsoft.com|Microsoft] software, not because it's [wp://open source], period. OTOH there's at least one piece of Windows documentation where Perl is mentioned as a topical example: not terribly relevant, but just to let you know...</p>
<p>Anyway there are <strong>quite a lot</strong> of programming languages which do <em>not</em> ship with any version of Windows, wheter open source or not. Indeed the average Windows user won't need a programming language in any case. (FWIW Microsoft produces and sells compilers and/or development tools for several languages, IIRC there are even free versions -as in "free beer"- of some. Yet they're not distribuited with Windows.) For those who want one, it will generally be a few clicks away. In the case of Perl, the easiest and most common choice will be [http://www.activestate.com/|ActiveState]'s [http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/|ActivePerl].</p>
<blockquote><i>Does this snub from Microsoft give PERL less credibilty than other software that is enterprise class like WORD or INTERNET EXPLORER?</i></blockquote>
<p>Not at all! Word is a respectable program and all, for some applications. But it is a very poor tool, nay fundamentally a toy one, for those who are in the know of good typesetting and document managing. Thus is has <em>popularity</em>, but <strong>no</strong> <em>credibilty</em>. OTOH there are good alternatives which are also free in the widest sense of the word and more or less open source, like [http://www.tug.org|TeX & C.]</p>
<p>BTW: it has already been told you, but <strong>[id://510594|there's not such a thing as "PERL"]</strong>: as you can see from that link itself, the use of an all uppercase "PERL" is a means in the community to distinguish who's in the know from who's not. As usual the best explanation is the one that ships with perl: check [http://perldoc.perl.org/perlfaq1.html#What's-the-difference-between-%22perl%22-and-%22Perl%22%3f|perldoc -q difference between "perl" and "Perl"].</p>
<blockquote><i>I must say I have found PERL to be pretty hard to use. I am a serious hacker with 22 years experiance in IT. Most of those years were spent hacking. If PERL is indeed already installed on a system..like it was on mine (and I didn't even know) shouldn't they make it more obvious that its on there? I consider myself pretty computer technical..AOL, Earthlink, EV1 and I know Powerpoint also..So I am no slouch.</i></blockquote>
<p><em>Please</em> do not take it as a personal offense, but despite your repeated boasting about having <em>"22 years experiance in IT"</em>, evidence is that your experience has been in just some limited areas: all those things that you mention -AOL, Earthlink, EV1, Powerpoint- <strong>are by no means the whole world</strong>. More precisely they comprise a very small portion of the (IT) world.</p>
<p>I'll try to clarify with an example: I think I'm a pretty decent [blazar|judoka] with several years of experience in this sense. Yet I can't play basketball. I can't even dribble the ball, and apart the fact that I know that the ball has to be thrown in the basket to score some points, I ignore the rules. Now, basketball for me is like "PERL" for you. No matter how much experience I have with some other sports, I can't play basketball. BTW: it's not <em>"my"</em> sport and I could never make a decent let alone a mediocre player. But I could at least study the rules. You ignore the <em>very basic</em> "rules" of Perl, nay, evidence is that you hardly get what Perl really is. So it's not surprising that you find it <em>"to be pretty hard to use"</em>.</p>
<p>So my piece of advice is: forget about your 22 years worth of experience: you will have to start learning anew something different from what you already know. Also, 22 years mean nothing <em>a priori</em>: given [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang|her age], [audreyt|Audrey Tang] can hardly have that many years of programming experience. Yet she's a much better hacker than many older programmers with longer lasting programming careers, and when I think of her I doubt I will ever be such an extraordinaire one! <strong>It's quality that matters, not quantity!</strong></p>
<blockquote><i>I guess what I am trying to say is if someone has tech as me has trouble with PERL what does that average Joe experiance when trying to hack code?</i></blockquote>
<p>I don't know if I'm as tech as you, but Perl was a [id://488691|natural pick] for me. However I had some previous experience with other programming languages, although none of them really "caught" me as much as Perl.</p>
<blockquote><i>Thanks again for all the help I am still working on getting this going - Just throwing this out for discussion. Also lots of really technical people in my hometown have never even heard of PERL!</i></blockquote>
<p>As the [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_centos/|funny anecdote] [derby] [id://599902|reported] in another [id://599773|thread] of [href://?node_id=6364;user=Kevin_Raymer|yours] shows, many people regard themselves and are possibly even regarded as <em>"technical"</em> without really being, or being only in some limited sense. You can by no means be an expert in "everything". I guess I'm a pretty "technical guy" in some application areas but I have <em>no</em> experience with videogames and only limited sysadmin skills and know-how, for example. Also, it's not surprising at all that they haven't ever heard about Perl! There are <strong>[http://www.levenez.com/lang/|quite a lot]</strong> of other programming languages actively used, not to mention abandoned ones that are still of historical interest: do they know "all" the other ones?!?</p>
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