[LUNI] Linux Programming

[Jay Strauss]

I'm reading the mythical man month right now, and seems to me, languages in
general from a productivity point of view, are only incrementally more/less
productive.  The big jump occurred when we moved from assembler to Ada, C,
Fortran, Cobol...Perl, Java.  The bulk of coding exists in design,
specification, and testing.  Which is *I guess* what you're saying.

Not that anyone cares, or that this thread is answering the original post, I
like Perl, been off/on learning Java (I too wish for a Perl GUI and embedded
runtime in the Browser).

And in this corner:
Steve "Perl Pearl" Lembark

Vs.

Martin "basher (Perl basher that is)" Maney

Now lets see a dirty fight, lets see the sh*t fly, off with the gloves


----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Maney" <maney at pobox.com>
To: <luni at luni.org>
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 10:28 AM
Subject: Re: [LUNI] Linux Programming


> Ah, spring.  It's my favorite time of the year - a time of renewal, of
> throwing out the detritus of the winter past, and for at least one good
rant
> against illogic...
>
> On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 09:37:36AM -0600, Steven Lembark wrote:
> > Main point w/ Perl is that the programmer has the option
> > of doing things how they feel is best. If you don't want
>
> Main problem w/ Perl is that the programmer has the option of disguising
> what he means with needlessly different ways of saying it.  This whole
> notion that code should be as ad-hoc structured as natral language seems
to
> me to reflect a deep misunderstanding about what is the hard part of
> programming.  OTOH, it's a very postmodern idea.  You know what you get
when
> you cross a Mafia Don with a postmodernist, don't you?  That's right, an
> offer you can't understand.
>
> > programmers to have control over the code why not just use
> > automatic code generation and be done with it?
>
> Coding is not the hard part.  You may want to review essentially all the
> work done in the last couple decades on programming methodology if you're
> unclear about this.
>
> > These are a few reasons I find it easier to teach Perl
> > as a first language: Most of the coding effort goes
>
> Just want to draw attention to your statement that you're talking about
> teaching a *first* [programming] language here.
>
> > towards productive work rather than syntatic sugar.
> > Learning Java as a first language faces much the same
> > problem. Compare the amount of code it takes to just
> > 'print "Hello, world!\n";'. I also don't have to spend
>
> Wow, that's a lot of overhead.  Here's the Python version:
>
> 'Hello, world!'
>
> Obviously the overhead of trivial programs is more important than anything
> else - we should never have given up Basic!
>
> > The other nice thing about Perl on *NIX is that you get
> > much of the C std library and unistd.h built into the
> > language (e.g., link, unlink, symlink, directory and
> > file tests). Intuitions based on C or shell operations
> > translate directly into Perl code. This makes it easier
> > to actually write code that does something useful early
> > in the learning cycle (e.g., scan a directory for files
>
> What a strange and irrational thing to say.  People who are learning their
> *first* programming language already understand the C library routines?
> Pull the other one, Steven, this one's got bells on!
>
> > containing "Hello, world!"). Combined with the portability
> > to windog & Mac platforms this allows people to walk up
> > and deal with realistic problems quickly.
>
> Portability is another straw man - if serious portability is important,
you
> code in C, probably with some annoying omissions if you want to cover the
> more esoteric platforms that still have non-standard-compliant toolchains.
> Anywhere you can run Perl, there is a C compiler available: that's how
Perl
> got there, after all.
>
> --
> I must say I find television very educational.
> The minute somebody turns it on,
> I go to the library and read a good book. -- Groucho Marx
>
> (sometimes I think we should s/television/internet/ ...)
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Linux Users Of Northern Illinois - Technical Discussion
> luni at luni.org
> http://luni.org/mailman/listinfo/luni


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