| Wow. A five-paragraph I-hate-Perl rant by someone who obviously neither knows the language nor wants to. Though I probably wouldn't recommend Perl as a first language for everybody either, that's some pretty weak arguments. Appeal to authority of other Perl haters only proves Perl haters exist. For crying out loud, Perl doesn't have exposed pointers. Perl doesn't prevent the programmer from doing basic parameter checking in functions. Decent REPLs are available for Perl. How could "the Perl REPL" not work with readline if he just said there wasn't a Perl REPL in the previous sentence? Perl doesn't have the same opinion as him as to what sane typing is. Doing stupid stuff results in undefined (to him, at least) behavior. It's possible to implement action-at-a-distance in Perl. Python and Ruby have their warts too, they're just not exposed in this thread because there's no hater around to quote out-of-context lists of surprising behavior. Arguing not to learn Perl because the average Perl out there is ugly? Non sequitur. No one with an open mind blah blah blah? I've got opposing data points. (not to mention the true scotsman) Particularly ironic to quote that MJD text from almost twelve years ago. All of the behavior he described, I can now mostly observe from Python self-appointed champions. And now on HN as well. (I'm not saying you have to use Perl. I'm just saying dismissing it for the "reasons" listed in parent post doesn't make sense.) |