Many of us, might eat, drink and live Perl. Well, it makes daily work easier and enjoyable. Perl may have played major part in developing your career and job and may have been converted in your bread butter of your family. It could be a major part of your programming experience and yes, some people think in Perl.

It becomes interesting to know what other tools, you are capable to develop/cultivate for yourself, which can replace Perl at this stage in your life. The tool can can give you same joy and excitement and easily replace all the functionalitis in your life described above. If you have to start a new life, which is far, far away from Perl, where you would go? what you would do?

I haven't experienced myself in recent past, but I think that It is pssible to do such. You might have experienced it. There are other similar things, which other people have enjoyed and have got all, what you have achieved via Perl.

It is also interesting to share, which objects have relatively comparable part like Perl, as you experience the life. It could be family, girl/boy friend, kids, TV, sports, music, exercise, yoga, pride, integrity etc..I like to mumble any opinions you have about this.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl Like Things
by chas (Priest) on Mar 12, 2005 at 04:22 UTC
    I've never found any programming language that intrigues me as Perl does. (I've used LISP and C/C++ and liked to have utilities that I wrote using those, but didn't enjoy the actual programming as much.) Playing music is probably the one thing that I enjoy in a similar way. The feeling that I get seeing a nice Perl program is similar to that evoked by hearing a clever musical phrase; in both cases I want to assimilate that so I can "make it my own." Perhaps it is because Perl seems closer to a "natural" language than other programming languages (at least the ones I am familiar with.) But fortunately I don't have to replace anything - I can have it all. Life seems good - I wish it were so for everyone!
    chas
[reply]

      For me the intruiging nature of Perl is only equalled by lisp - So I'm suprised you mention it in a non-intruiging sense.

      I guess it's just a case of each of us having different preferences.

      The thing about Perl is that there are a wide range of doing things, and ditto with Lisp - once you get it. With Perl you can do things in one fashion, and then gradually improve to using better idioms and techniques, whereas I'd say that with Lisp there's an obviously correct way to do things and once you've got it you know it.

      I had a real awakening once I realised that I understood how lisp worked, and how to do things in a lispy fashion - something that was wholey new to me.

      I come from a z80 assembly background, via BASIC, C, C++, and Java. Each of those taught me something new. With C it was that pointers could be used to get low-level access so assembly language wasn't required. With C++ it was OO, and the fun of the STD::Strings. With Java I got more into OO.

      From that point of view Perl is almost a step backwards, very procedural, and with so-so OO support - but I keep being drawn back to perl as it suits me, easy to get started working on a new problem for example.

      Lisp is something I cannot often use for practical reasons but it's so .. me!

      Steve
      ---
      steve.org.uk
[reply]
        Actually, I do really like LISP a lot - I studied all of Steele's book and read a lot of the Reference Manual (hundreds of pages available online). But with Perl it is so easy to do fairly complex things (using available modules.) E.g., I wrote my own webmail and web news reader programs in about a day. Also, Perl has to be the ultimate in text searching and manipulation; in some sense that seems like one of the most important things that one can do - after all, most information that humans are concerned with can be expressed as text, and if one can deal with and manipulate that, what else is necessary?
        Of course, all programming languages ultimately do the same things; only the style (and built-ins) differ.
        chas
[reply]
Re: Perl Like Things
by zetetes (Pilgrim) on Mar 12, 2005 at 21:42 UTC
    well, as you mention: life's not always about coding.

    the best way to complement (or, if you wish, substitute) perl is aikido, which, to me, fulfills perl's TIMTOWTDI the best. and you not only need your brain but your body and soul as well. which is nice.

    and yes, i strongly believe, life's good.
[reply]
Re: Perl Like Things
by neniro (Priest) on Mar 12, 2005 at 17:17 UTC
    I don't wonna replace perl for anything - but I'd like to learn different ways of solving tasks in different languages. If I see something new I try to find a perl-way of doing it. Some concepts get clearer if you can see them from a different point of view. I never really understood what to use closures for - until I saw pythons lambda-functions and now I'm learning how to use anonymous functions in perl.
[reply]
Re: Perl Like Things
by prasadbabu (Prior) on Mar 12, 2005 at 06:27 UTC
    s/.*/Perl/gs;

    Prasad

[reply]
[d/l]

Back to Meditations