Re^4: Perl and Discipline

It's pretty darn easy to write lazy code in any language. Java for instance allow you to write empty exception catch blocks, PHP lets you go without OO or use strict much like Perl.

Perl and others therefore allow a freedom to display a lack of education or a lack of discipline(lazyness).

This can be a good thing though as there are many situations where undisiciplined(bad) code does not matter and the development speed does. This especially applies for one off throwaway scripts, (It can be great to know your code will be useless after x occurs)

Discipline often takes more time and patience which is why it is frequently skipped with an evil laugh:)

Comment on Re^4: Perl and Discipline - and Freedom

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Re^5: Perl and Discipline - and Freedom by adrianh (Chancellor) on Aug 09, 2005 at 17:28 UTC
This can be a good thing though as there are many situations where undisiciplined(bad) code does not matter and the development speed does ... Discipline often takes more time and patience which is why it is frequently skipped with an evil laugh Yes, but are these trade offs always necessary? Can we write good code quickly? Can we design languages that makes the "right" choice easier without impacting flexibility? Fools will write bad code in any language. Geniuses will write wonderful code in any language. However in the middle ground there are a lot of reasonable people trying their best to do a decent job - and I want my programming language to help as much as possible. I think it's harder to write bad code in Perl 6 and Ruby because they naturally support some features that you have to jump through hoops to get in Perl 5.	[reply]

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Re^5: Perl and Discipline - and Freedom
by adrianh (Chancellor) on Aug 09, 2005 at 17:28 UTC

This can be a good thing though as there are many situations where undisiciplined(bad) code does not matter and the development speed does ... Discipline often takes more time and patience which is why it is frequently skipped with an evil laugh

Yes, but are these trade offs always necessary? Can we write good code quickly? Can we design languages that makes the "right" choice easier without impacting flexibility?

Fools will write bad code in any language. Geniuses will write wonderful code in any language. However in the middle ground there are a lot of reasonable people trying their best to do a decent job - and I want my programming language to help as much as possible.

I think it's harder to write bad code in Perl 6 and Ruby because they naturally support some features that you have to jump through hoops to get in Perl 5.

[reply]