Re^3: Perl 6 critique is a good thing

You're right that it's as silly to expect a newbie to be able to read my perl code as it is to expect a newbie to be able to read Dickens.

However, if someone claims to be writing in English (like Joyce) and yet a fluent English speaker (me) can't understand what the hell he's going on about, then that indicates that Joyce's work is, in fact, crap. Same applies to perl code that is hard for a fluent perl coder to read. It's crap code.

Comment on Re^3: Perl 6 critique is a good thing

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Some programs have to be hard to read. by Ovid (Cardinal) on Oct 22, 2004 at 13:20 UTC
DrHyde wrote: Same applies to perl code that is hard for a fluent perl coder to read. It's crap code. If you can't read my "hello world" program, you're right. My program is crap. However, some problems are hard. There is no easy way to solve them and thus there is no easy way to express them. For example, most people do not refer to Damian Conway's modules as "crap", but frequently one finds them to be crap by your definition. While Damian can be viewed as an extreme case, it's because he chooses to solve extreme problems. I've worked with chromatic before and I've seen him write some head spinning code -- but not for "hello world." Cheers, Ovid New address of my CGI Course.	[reply]
Re: Some programs have to be hard to read. by DrHyde (Prior) on Oct 25, 2004 at 09:07 UTC
Fair point. Clearly hard problems sometimes need complex solutions, and maybe I won't understand the algorithm. But the sort of simple stuff that the vast majority of us write day in and day out at work is not in that league.	[reply]