Okay.

As some of you may be aware from my whinging in the CB, I attended "Java for Non-C Programmers" last week.

When I joined my current company as a Support Analyst(circa 4 months ago), I had no programming experience. I was told the learning curve would be steep, and I would have to pick up a lot off my own back, without pestering colleagues for help. I was introduced to Perl in my first week, and by the end of that week I had sent merlyn some royalties and purchased "Learning Perl, 2nd Edition".

Wow! How come I haven't seen the utter coolness of programming until now? I mean sure, I hacked HTML once before (which isn't a programming language incidentally, see Learning Perl, 2nd Ed. Page 61) - but I've never enjoyed data input so much in my life! I felt I had finally found my career, and I was ready to stay and absorb as much as possible.

Anyway, this happy marriage continues for a few months, until my boss comes up to me and says "I want you to join us in Development. You're going nowhere with the Support schmucks." (paraphrased).

I said, "Ok, sure, you're the boss", whilst secretly rejoicing at the prospect of hacking Perl all day without phone interruptions.

"Great!" he says. "Obviously, you will need a Java Course...".

Eh?

So, background aside, my company paid a fair amount of moolah for me to attend "JVANC" for the week. I was looking forward to it to tell the truth, as this would be my first formal course in IT. I was excited. The first day, we cover fundamentals like variable types and what classes are etc, and I'm thinking, "Well hey, OO Programming seems to be pretty cool!". The theory complete, we hit our first practical. The "Hello World!" java applet. "Easy peasy," I think to myself. I'm smiling away until I see the following :

System.out.println("Hello World!");
[download]

Come again?

What the hell is wrong with  print "Hello World!";. What's with this longwinded crap? That was when I realised which language I loved. I knew from that Monday afternoon, that Perl was for me. I enjoyed the course as it turned out, but I know in my heart that Perl is a language that really was suited to me as a non-programmer. I mean look at this : -

try
    {
      FileInputStream inStream = new FileInputStream( args[0] );
      inStream = ("myFile.txt");
    }
    catch(IOException ioerr)
    {
      System.out.println( ioerr.toString() );
    }
[download]

and compare it with this :-

open(FH,"myFile.txt") or die "Nope : $!\n";
[download]

Azatoth a.k.a Captain Whiplash

Make Your Die Messages Full of Wisdom!
Get YOUR PerlMonks Stagename here!
Want to speak like a Londoner?