in reply to Re^10: howto parse (or determining end) of a line of perl
in thread howto parse (or determining end) of a line of perl

Usually, perl's "line noise" reputation is considered "bad" by those who use it to describe Perl code's look.

Precisely. The detractors look at Perl and the absolute worst thing to their minds that they can say about it is, "ooh, ooh, it looks like line noise". Well that's just fine by me.

What do people say about Java? It's a massive resource hog. PHP? It's a security nightmare. Perl? Line noise. Quelle horreur.

Even better than that this line noise reputation may well serve as a quality filter of sorts. Do we really want such people who are put off by a little complexity of syntax to be tangling with all the power that Perl provides? I think that they and us are both better served by them using other platforms.

In short, I contend that Perl's "line noise reputation" (whether a valid criticism or not) is not inherently the bad thing which your previous post supposes.

  • Comment on Re^11: howto parse (or determining end) of a line of perl

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^12: howto parse (or determining end) of a line of perl
by perl-diddler (Chaplain) on Sep 18, 2016 at 21:31 UTC
    I would, without question, say it is not a good thing. I base my opinion in what is *readable* (would you find a book easier to read with sigils indicating grammar part (noun, verb, adjective...etc) in front of every word?

    Besides the hindrance to legibility, computer linguists and human-language linguists both agree that one of the key features of a powerful languages is conciseness.

    The ability to express your idea, understandably to your audience, in the minimum of 'quanta' (units of meaning/information), directly makes for a more powerful language than one that takes many auxiliary helpers and extra symbols to get an idea across.

    That is a widely agreed upon feature of a good language -- regardless of the participants.

      > would you find a book easier to read with sigils indicating grammar part (noun, verb, adjective...etc) in front of every word

      My mother tongue doesn't feature articles. I view them (in English and French) as kind of sigils, yes.

      ($q=q:Sq=~/;[c](.)(.)/;chr(-||-|5+lengthSq)`"S|oS2"`map{chr |+ord }map{substrSq`S_+|`|}3E|-|`7**2-3:)=~y+S|`+$1,++print+eval$q,q,a,