So there I was, dancing up a storm at a local nightclub (Goth/Industrial night!), when my date struck up a conversation with a guy. Apparently, he's finishing his Master's degree in computer science. We chatted a bit about what we do and don't like about the computer world. Apparently, despite being an open-source fanatic (unlike me), he doesn't like Perl. His experience has been that much of the Perl code that he runs across is horrible and he's sick of maintaining it.

I initially agreed with him, but I got to thinking about it and now I'm not so sure. I've programmed in COBOL, EasyTrieve Plus, 8088 Assembler, FOCUS, VBScript, VB, a little bit of C, JavaScript, and several Variations of Basic. As such, I think it's fair to say that I've seen a few different programming languages and how their programmers use them. I have been repeatedly astonished at the 'fascinating' code people can churn out.

• One VBScript programmer wrote his own 'split' function because he thought that VBScript's split function wasn't working. Turns out he just had his syntax wrong.
• A COBOL programmer wrote a 120 line routine to parse some data. Her routine was broken because she hadn't read the documentation on the function she was using. I fixed it and got it down to 80 lines of code, to boot (much easier to read code, too).
• Gobs of JavaScript programmers write code that only works on one browser, but they don't bother to test it. And you just gotta love their one-character variable names :)
• Many languages: gobs of global variables, no checking the succes of system calls, using "select * from ..." in embedded SQL statements, etc.

The list of bad programming practices goes on and on. So why does Perl get a bad rep? I think there are a variety of reasons, but that's not really the point of this node. What I want to know is, do others find that Perl programmers have poorer skills than others? I have heard this several times, but usually it's from those who don't know Perl well. Of course, maybe most programmers don't know Perl well, so that may be unfair.

If we do have masses of programmers who are 'worse than average', we're our own worst enemy. If we're not really that bad, why the misperception? My hunch is that we might be as bad as they say. Most of the Perl code that I find available is of very poor quality :(

Oh, and I pulled a muscle dancing. Ouch.

Cheers,
Ovid

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