in reply to Re^5: Thread on Joel on software forum : "I hate Perl programmers."
in thread Thread on Joel on software forum : "I hate Perl programmers."

I'd say the biggest problem with using closures is that the number of people who fully understand them and can comfortably deal with code using closures is very small -- even smaller than the number who can comfortably deal with OO code. If you spend time on #perl or certain PM threads, it seems like everyone knows this stuff, but in reality it raises the bar quite a bit. You may have a hard time finding a module maintainer or an employee who can deal with closure-heavy code. I say this after having plenty of trouble trying to hire people who can deal with what I consider basic OO code.

I'm not saying there are no good uses for closures, but they aren't something I'd use frequently.

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Re^7: Thread on Joel on software forum : "I hate Perl programmers."
by tilly (Archbishop) on Jun 17, 2005 at 19:00 UTC
    My solution to that is simple, I just work with people that you recommend. ;-)
[reply]
      Yeah, I'm pretty sure those guys can deal with some closures. They'd probably think it was fun too. :)
[reply]
        But in all seriousness, I've had to teach Perl from scratch to multiple people (who were already programmers, just not Perl programmers). I taught them about how to use closures for creating dispatch tables and never had a problem. They picked it up easily, used the technique in Perl, and treated it like they did regular expressions: just another convenient construct that was available in Perl but not C.

        Note that I did not show them all possible uses of closures, just the one specific case which came up a lot in that codebase.

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