I have one word for you, actually it is an acronym

CPAN

The thing that really makes Perl the ideal language for me is the community behind it.

When I first started my job here I was forced to use ASP w/VBscript. There is nothing comparable to the CPAN or places like perlmonks out there. I posted a question on a site about 4 months ago and I still have not recieved a response. When I hit that site my monk instincts had me answering all these questions because there seems to be no one out there (in ASP land) willing to help each other.

I believe Perl is as versitile as JAVA (if not more), but the community behind it (CPAN, PM.ORG, PerlMonks.org, O'Reilly, ActiveState and countless others).

Plus the Camel maskot is a hell of a lot cooler than a cup of coffee!!

--BigJoe

Learn patience, you must.
Young PerlMonk, craves Not these things.
Use the source Luke.

Comment on Re: What is it about perl that makes perl so cool?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: What is it about perl that makes perl so cool? by iamnothing (Friar) on Dec 02, 2000 at 01:23 UTC
One of the things that has always drawn me to Perl (I'm from a C/C++ background) is definitely the community. As with all complex communities, there are the nay-sayers who will smack down any idea that is not theirs, but I've found that there are less in the Perl Community (unless you reference another language such as Python or Java to perform a task not easily implemented in Perl). In the C/C++ and Java worlds, I've found entirely too many people who are unwilling to help anyone, but are quick to defend their pedestal. Usually when I've had to ask questions on Perl in the past, I could find the answers relatively quickly, often on sites like this, where there are several replies documenting different methods to accomplish the problem at hand. Before I even asked the question. Now that I'm attempting a code conversion for our Win32 systems from a specialized language (WinBatch), I'm going to be faced with a million new challenges that haven't been answered yet. But I'm at least confident that many of them will be answered much faster than if I used C/C++. And without the hype. The other thing I love about Perl is the flexibility of the language. I can sit down and prototype the functionality quickly and make it work. Python is the only other language that I can do that with easily, and for a good portion of what I do, it's still overkill. Java, C, and C++ fall prey to a few more cycles in development for me, even though I've been using them longer (which could be part of my problem). So, the community, and the flexibility. That's why I think Perl is cool...	[reply]
Re: Re: What is it about perl that makes perl so cool? by Elgon (Curate) on Dec 09, 2000 at 00:09 UTC
S'not an acronym it's an abbreviation. An acronym is where the initials make up a previously existing word - such as Perl Is Cooler Than Using Rubbish Executables, PICTURE - whereas an abbreviation just makes up a list of letters - Pathologically Ecclectic Rubbish Lister, PERL. Back to the main thread. Perl is cool for several reasons: 1) It took me about 20 minutes to get my first script running after not having programed for about 5 years (And that vas VB) 2) I can make things crufty and hackish, simple to read or if I don't like the maintainer obfuscated. 3) You can do lots of fun things with it. 4) Wall-ites, Perlies or whatever you wish to call them are helpful. Elgon	[reply]