in reply to Perl as Cr*p?

If we do have masses of programmers who are 'worse than average', we're our own worst enemy. If we're not really that bad, why the misperception? My hunch is that we might be as bad as they say. Most of the Perl code that I find available is of very poor quality :(

Well, many people who program in perl don't come from a strong programming background; mabey they know html and dabble in JavaScript, and their boss wants them to do a quick script in perl, so they learn as much as they need to and get started, not fully understanding what they need. I think that perl has so many people from that type of background becuase of it's easiness to learn, which I think is a good thing. Now, perl does have many people from a strong cs background, coming from languages such as C/C++,Pascal,etc. I don't think we're as bad as some people say, probably in the middle somewhere. But, anyone who would dismiss a whole language merely because he has run across a few people who don't program in it very well is not very fair.

The 15 year old, freshman programmer,
Stephen Rawls

In Section Meditations