I was recently reading an article somewhere (I've lost it since) that claimed that "...Perl encourages a lack of discipline..." For a moment or two, I thought that might be correct. I realized, though, that it's not.

Perl allows a lack of discipline, but that's not really the same as encouraging it. Unlike some B&D languages like Pascal, Perl will allow me to do some very careless and risky things, if I want. Perl does not force me to behave myself. Leave off the use warnings and use strict pragmas, and Perl will let me do all kinds of things without complaint. If I'm just throwing together a quick script for a once-off job, I don't have to declare all my variables and #include header files.

On the other hand, I can also use the pragmas and OO programming to be as disciplined as I want. It's up to me.

Perl is about freedom to choose how much or how little discipline I want. It's up to me, not someone else who wants to protect me from myself. Larry and company no doubt have some opinions about discipline, but they don't impose their ideas on me. They let me choose. They trust me to choose wisely (or, sometimes, to pay the consequences).

In reply to Perl and Discipline - and Freedom by spiritway

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