I have been thinking about the comments "Perl code is hard to maintain", and "Perl's design promotes hard to read code." I think most monks here will agree with this; these are naive comments. You can write Hard to read/maintain code in any language and Perl is no exception.
To the newbie, Perl can be difficult to read. Even well written code. For some people, in order to learn Perl they have to go through a paradigm shift. The Perl paradigm, TMTOWTDI, is different than any language I have used. When I first started learning perl I found it difficult to read. Then, after reading "Learning Perl", I felt more comfortable reading and writing Perl.
With a general understanding of programming, one can look at code in almost any language and understand some of it. One thing that makes a language harder to understand are it's advanced features. Well, that explains a lot for Perl because it has tons of advanced features that many languages do not have (in my experience). So how can someone from a different paradigm expect to understand Perl the first time they look at it.
Now, taking that into consideration, let's ask the question, "What is maintainable perl code?" My very simplistic viewpoint is, "Maintainable perl code can be understood or figured out by a programmer that has invested the time and effort to learn and understand the language. But it should not require 10 years of Perl under your belt (or dress)."
Disclaimer:
I am a newbie, so please go easy on me if you don't like what I write :-).
Update:
Wow! I want to thank everyone for your informative comments. I never thought so many people would be interested in commenting on this. I am pleasantly surprised.
In reply to What is maintainable perl code? by disciple
| For: | Use: | ||
| & | & | ||
| < | < | ||
| > | > | ||
| [ | [ | ||
| ] | ] |