[Melbourne-pm] thanks to all

[Timothy S. Nelson]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008, John Thornton wrote:

> Objectively Perl is probably a simpler language to learn than Java. But I
> am starting to get my mind around the classes of Java, its brackets etc, in
> a way that never happened with Perl.
>
> Perl seems to be a bit of an anarchic language to me - let's break the
> rules. But as a beginner I really need rules.

 	John, I think you've made the right decision.  I hate using Java, but 
I think it's a good idea at your stage.  But there's something I hope you will
remember; nearly every programming language has a way of doing things.  If you 
don't get that way of doing things in your head (which you obviously are 
managing in Java) then you spend a lot of time fighting the language.  But 
sometimes the way the language wants to do things is not the best way of 
achieving the task.  That's why sometimes a FORTRAN programmer (FORTRAN is 
noted for its speed) will not come up with as quick a solution as an APL 
programmer (APL makes sorting easy).  I'd say that learning Java is the right 
choice for you at the moment, as it will give you the hang of two basic 
paradigms; Object-oriented, and Procedural.  But I think that once you have 
the hang of those, it would be a good idea to try a Functional language, after 
reading http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html (which is about why Lisp is great 
:) ).

 	Then, after you have the hang of a number of these paradigms, and you 
have the rules of good programming in each embedded in your mind, *then* give 
Perl a try.

 	I use Perl not because it has no rules, but because I have a pretty 
good idea of what rules I think are good, and which ones I think are bad, and 
Perl is the only language I know where I can use most of the rules I think are 
good; other languages prevent me from doing this.

 	:)


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