Perl work at Monash

[Timothy S. Nelson]

On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Andrew Savige wrote:

> Timothy S. Nelson wrote:
> > On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Nathan Bailey wrote:
> > 
> > > 1) Would be interested in general comments (i.e. from everyone) on the
> > > "Perl career progression" at:
> > > 	http://polynate.net/work/perl_career.html
> > 
> > 	Looks good.  The only "problem" is that it's specific to your 
> > field/job (ie. something more general would be cool).  
> 
> Agreed. Perl is a *general-purpose* programming language, not restricted
> to the World Wide Web -- despite what the Oxford dictionary may say. ;-)

	But his is not only restricted to the WWW, but to portals :).  But the 
general plan is a good idea, and it would be easily adaptable to other 
situations.  

> I was dismayed when http://use.perl.org reported that the Oxford
> Dictionary had added the following cut-down description of Perl:
> "Perl. noun [mass noun]. Computing. a high-level programming language used
> especially for applications running on the World Wide Web. ORIGIN 1980s:

	I'd call it "accurate, but misleading".  

> respelling of PEARL, arbitrarily chosen for its positive connotations".

	Does anyone know if this is correct?  I'd always assumed that the 
Practical Extraction and Reporting name was designed at the same time.  

> The original proposed entry was much longer and included the phrase
> "widely used for a variety of tasks" which was removed to save space.
> Reminds me of the abbreviated "mostly harmless" description of Earth
> in Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.

	I think the OED entry would be more accurate as "Primarily 
Text-processing".  

	:)


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| Name: Tim Nelson                 | Because the Creator is,        |
| E-mail: wayland at smartchat.net.au | I am                           |
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