To quote Vizzini… “Inconceivable!”
I use Perl daily for a wide range of tasks. It’s one of those core Linux/Unix things you use because once you’re comfortable with it you just get stuff done.
Back in January 2000 I had the pleasure of hearing someone say - in front of a room full of COBOL developers - “Now that THAT is done we won’t need COBOL developers until January 19, 2038.” They were met with blank stares until one of them realized the significance to the Unix system clock.
4 Likes
I guess PowerShell is off the scale??? I mean, this “language” has stolen^H^H^H^H^H^H borrowed all the good ideas from Perl, and yet managed to be completely useless. Whenever Larry Wall anticipated, what a user (or at least a programmer) would need, and put it into Perl, the creators of PowerShell failed with impeccable perfection.
2 Likes
Ah, memories. I trolled consultants and corporate execs HARD with the 2038 time_t overflow back in 1999.
R isn’t that bad in its niche, really. Sure, the actual language is byzantine, but it does benefit a lot from being written around working with table-shaped data. R makes it trivial to juggle columns and rows,most of the functionality you have at hand is vectorized (so it’s trivial to e.g. do things element-wise for multiple columns), and most of the functions will accept and when appropriate return tables. Since the kind of data I work with is mostly table-shaped this ends up working well in practice.
Sure, pandas and DataFrame provides similar functionality in Python … as long as you stay within pandas. It’s not at all bad, but it’s more “a way to do this with python” and less “a language fundamentally made for doing this”.
oh wow. well that finally explains it.
ive tried a handful of times to give answers and ive never been allowed. ( being the sort who assumes comments are less intrusive than new replies, and generally preferring not to intrude. ) i just assumed it was because i didn’t go gather whuffie elsewhere.
( s.o. is great. i can’t remember how we all made it through before. )
1 Like
Wow - R is least disliked? Maybe that’s just because it has a locked-in audience of statisticians who don’t know any other real programming languages?
i’ve never used perl and i don’t do much unix cli type work, but considering it’s now “the most hated programming language”… where should i start?
is the lama book still the best way to go? ( @schmorgluck )
( i prefer books because i feel like i retain the information longer, but i guess it is the modern age… )
unrelated:
heck. is “char” pronounced “char” or “car”? sql “sequel” or “s-q-l”? tabs or spaces. the battle never ends.
3 Likes
It’s pronounced “six”.
2 Likes
Llama book + Activeperl all the way
And I’m in the “vee-eye”, “char”, “sequel”, and spaces camp personally.
2 Likes
I haven’t written a line of COBOL since I was in junior college 30+ years ago. Maybe I should dust it off. Yeah, it’s verbose as hell, but it really is pretty straightforward, and even semi-modern versions allow you to modularize your code. One of my junior college projects required writing the main program in COBOL and writing and linking a FORTRAN module for some intensive calculations.
On the other hand, what COBOL that I ever wrote was done on minis rather than mainframes, and so I know basically nothing about working with mainframes. JCL? CICS? LOL!
I can’t help but think that I might have been better off doing COBOL than trying to chase the language du jour. But hate Perl? I love it, especially for text processing. I can’t help but think that this is more something along the line of “fewer Perl questions on Stack Overflow” than “I hate Perl.”
1 Like
I think he was referring to APL.
life←{↑1 ⍵∨.∧3 4=+/,¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽⊂⍵}
-[—>+<]>-----.[—>+<]>++.—.--------.+++++++++++.+++[->+++<]>++.++++++++++++…----.+++++.-------.-[—>+<]>–.++[—>++<]>.-----------.+++++++++++++.-------.–[—>+<]>–.[->+++<]>++.++++++.–.[—>+<]>----.+[---->+<]>+++.—[->++++<]>-.-----------.+++++++.++++++.---------.--------.-[—>+<]>-.+[----->+<]>+.+.+++++.[---->+<]>+++.+[->+++<]>.++++++++++++.-.++++++.+[->+++<]>++.++++++++.+++++.-[->+++++<]>-.++.[—>++<]>+.------------.++++++.++.------.[—>+<]>+.++++++++++++.>++++++++++.++[++++>—<]>.+[–>+<]>++.—[->+++<]>+.[->+++++<]>-.—[->++++<]>-.+.-----------.+++…[++>—<]>–.-[—>++<]>–.-------.+[—>+<]>.[------>+<]>.+++++.-------.-[—>+<]>–.—[->++++
1 Like
here’s the biggest trip. my last post was not a random internet comment, but actually code. you just have to know the language.
basically, it calculates pi to seven digits and then orders you a pizza.
1 Like
I doubt this, as the brackets aren’t balanced. The last [ is a daed giveaway: You are opening a while loop, but never close it.
That’s clever. I didn’t actually see your comment, as I’ve cut down to < 5 min a day for BBS.
Perl isn’t bad. It’s wonderful for quickly slicing and dicing data, quick and dirty tools, and throwing together quick websites (although these days I’d much prefer node.js for the latter).
Like with any language, it’s way too easy to write shitty, unreadable, and unmaintainable code but that’s not a problem with the language itself.
Fuck PHP, though.
3 Likes
phew we can be friends.
thanks for the advice! book has now been acquired via my local library.
i’ve become convinced that most english sentences are accidental computations. you just need to find the right compiler. ( oops. i’m pretty sure this just calculated a fibonacci sequence. i know this does: )
DM's Esoteric Programming Languages - Chef - Fibonacci
Ingredients.
100 g flour
250 g butter
1 eggMethod.
Sift the flour. Put flour into mixing bowl. Serve with caramel sauce. Stir for 2 minutes. Remove egg. Rub the flour until sifted. Stir for 2 minutes. Fold the butter into the mixing bowl. Pour contents of the mixing bowl into the baking dish.
…
3 Likes
I warmly recommend Jeffrey Friedl’s Mastering Regular Expressions to go with it. It’s not specific to Perl, but has a large chapter dedicated to it. Had I read it before I wrote my CLI calculator, I probably wouldn’t have to start over.
2 Likes
