in reply to don't { use Perl }

look like you need to broaden your computing horizons my friend. There is more than one language to do it. The fewer blindspots you have the better you are. Preventing wheel reinvention is what the CPAN is for and if you had remained blind to cron you might have written a Perl daemon with a lot more effort. Don't think outside the box think outside the octagon.

YOu are right though Perl day in day out can make you blind and certainly a poorer programmer as you are exposed to fewer solutions and eventualities. I usually turn to computing magazines or websites to keep me up to date with the problem space of our everychanging world. You message should therefore be don't use Perl all the time for everthing just because you like it. Your lucky being artistic I find it hard to work out my brain any other way.

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Re: don't { use Perl }
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Jun 10, 2002 at 12:45 UTC
    I don't think that Erik's point was that using just one language made him narrow minded. His main problem is not able to figure out in which domain a problem lies. Knowing more languages than just Perl doesn't solve the problem of determining whether a solution needs to be searched in the language, the protocol, the system, the hardware or something else.

    It's good to broaden your horizon, but I don't give to much weigth to knowing lots of languages. Small domain languages can be useful, but the added value of knowing more general purpose languages rapidly decreases IMO.

    Abigail

[reply]
      When I read your remark:
      It's good to broaden your horizon, but I don't give to much weigth to knowing lots of languages. Small domain languages can be useful, but the added value of knowing more general purpose languages rapidly decreases IMO
      I immediately thought of Claude Levi-Strauss' remark "Language conditions thought." and wondered if you would agree or not?

      –hsm

      "Never try to teach a pig to sing…it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."
[reply]
        I immediately thought of Claude Levi-Strauss' remark "Language conditions thought." and wondered if you would agree or not?
        Didn't his brother or cousin go into genetic research? I mean, as a kid, growing up, I was always hearing something about "Levi-Strauss Genes".

        -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[reply]
        Since I don't know that remark, let alone its context, I've no opinion about it.

        Abigail

[reply]

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