in reply to How has Perl helped you?

Perl has enlightened me... It's made me realize that there are higher order concepts to worry about when programming, and to not get caught up in the semantics. So... I think that's helped me tremendously. At this point I think all programming languages are the same... In that I write my solution in a Perlish kinda way. The rest is just figuring out how to write Perl functions/constructs that don't have analogs or to just respect the local nuances/conventions/idioms of the language... (From what I've read recently elsewhere, Perl seems to have a lot of convenient idioms!)

Perl also made me think of philosophy a whole lot more. I'm not sure what the philosophy of Perl is (I've read "everything is a string") but I do know that Java's philosophy is "everything is an object".

I dunno. It's hard to explain the rest. Perl has helped change the way I think about the world. Again, more philosophical concepts and abstractions and just fun stuff. Don't sweat the details.

Oh and in high school I was oft quoted saying "if I perl script can't do it, I won't"

Cheers. =)

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Re^2: How has Perl helped you?
by merlyn (Sage) on May 14, 2005 at 13:33 UTC
    "... high school ... Perl ..."

    {sigh} You kids. {grin}

    Back when I was in high school, there were no Desktop Computers: just machines that a "department" could share (minicomputers like the Dec 11 series). {insert traditional "snow both ways uphill" blather here}

    -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
    Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

[reply]
      Howdy!

      *snort*

      When *I* was in high school, I got my first computer -- a DigiComp 1. It had three flipflops and six gates. It was completely mechanical and was manually clocked. We didn't have electronic computers in my high school. Calculators were a novelty.

      *grin*

      yours,
      Michael
[reply]
        I remember the DigiComp 1. The last program in the series solves the "farmer, corn, goat going across a river in a single boat" problem, and that problem amazed me, as did the solution on such limited hardware.

        Of course, the problem always amazed me because I kept thinking, "if he can tie the goat up well enough that it won't get away when left alone, he can certainly tie it up enough to keep it from the corn." But that's logic for you.

        -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
        Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

[reply]
Re^2: How has Perl helped you?
by bart (Canon) on May 14, 2005 at 08:21 UTC
    I'm not sure what the philosophy of Perl is (I've read "everything is a string")

    No, that's TCL, at least, before version 8 or so (I think), when it got a real compiler, in the same sense that Perl has one.

[reply]

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