in reply to Perl Vs. C

Experience has taught this old fart coder never to enter into religious discussions...

Oh what the hell.

Quite often I hear the refrain, "Well this Perl thing is all well and good, but you're looking at a team of 'C' guys and gals here."

So what to do? Force this bunch of K&R's to learn Perl using your BIG Slam E-Commerce Project as the test bed for for thier first scripts? Hmmm...

Here are a few tips, because yes Perl is worth it.

  1. Hire or contract a hardcore Perl 'er (some of these higher life forms can be found hanging around here) to babysit the 'C' gang through eary potty training.
  2. Buy the books, Buy the Books... they can read them on the above potty.
  3. Last but not least, if budgets allow, send them to a company like Stonehedge for training and a fast track to Perl adolescence.

mitd-Made in the Dark
'My favourite colour appears to be grey.'

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
And he said "Let the young be fed on Milk and Bread"
by frankus (Priest) on Oct 31, 2000 at 15:06 UTC

    I think your statement might be more palatable if it didn't demean C programmers by comparing them to toddlers. C is an excellent grounding to learn Perl. (If you want to learn Perl, It's fun :)

    Perl Developers I've met, who began cutting code with Perl, are unaware of how friendly, forgiving and rapid Perl is.

    I have seen some coders baulk at the sight of other languages:

    • "Waddaya mean arrays are fixed length?!"
    • "I have to do all this declaration before I start?"
    • "Everything has to be in classes"
    • "I have to watch for buffer overflow?!"
    • "What are Hashes called in this language?"
    ...and so on.

    I am not saying you're wrong, but your zeal and 'good-natured' mockery do little to promote Perl or PerlMonks. 

    --
    Brother Frankus.
[reply]
      "I am not saying what you're wrong, but your zeal and 'good-natured' mockery do little to promote Perl or PerlMonks."

      'Soccer Balls!'

      <humility value=off> I started coding PDP Assembler in 1972. I have written 100's of 1000's of lines of 'C' and never once have I ever injured my funny bone. I had my first good Perl pooh in 1991. My Pink Camel has water stains caused a potty mishap in 1995.
      <humility value=on>

      Frankly Frankus suggesting that 'C' guys and gals don't have a sense of humour is ludicrous when everybody knows the only people with no sense of humour are APL programmers.1


      1 It should be noted that there is some controversy concerning the sense of humour of APL programmers since the creators of APL obviuosly had unusally large funny bones.

      No programmers were actually injured during makinging of this node

      mitd-Made in the Dark
      'My favourite colour appears to be grey.'

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