SPUG: One Python users' view of Perl

[Atom Powers]

On 6/14/07, Michael R. Wolf <MichaelRWolf at att.net> wrote:
> In a nutshell, he said that when he was looking at existing Perl code that
> there were too many "idioms" ("non-obvious clever linguistic nuances", by my
> reading of his intent) to learn in order to be effective.  TMTOWTDI was
> *not* his friend.  He found that Perl programmers reveled in TMTOWTDI,
> choosing to solve a particular problem with too many ways.  By contrast, the
> Python community seemed to standardize on one way.  He preferred that.  And
> as new idioms became more popular, the older ones were abandoned, with code
> rewritten to use the more "modern" forms.
>

Although I wouldn't call myself an evangelist, I have used perl quite
a bit in the past and I have found the "short and easy" way to do
something is often not the supportable way. I often force myself to
write the code out in the long form so that others after me can have a
hope of understanding what I'm doing.

But I would fight against any attempt to "standardize" the way perl is
written. Perhaps a "best practices" document or a "crib sheet" of
common shortcuts would be useful.

-- 
--
Perfection is just a word I use occasionally with mustard.
--Atom Powers--