in reply to Re: Re: Perl for the Masses?
in thread Perl for the Masses?

I think the first probably means that the compiled snobs are saying that Perl's partially-interpreted nature means it's not a "true" language.

The second refers to the idiocy of people who speak on topics that they have no knowledge of. :)

Now, in VB's defense, it is a very, very useful tool. It makes the MS products (partially) extensible, and extensibility is (almost) always a "Good Thing"(tm). It's also great for sketching GUI's, just as Perl is great for sketching programs. But, just try writing a multi-platform data-munging tool in VB. *grins*

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Perl for the Masses?
by dmmiller2k (Chaplain) on Jul 25, 2001 at 17:36 UTC
    Making the MS products extensible also makes them trés insecure. Witness the Melissa phenonmenon, et al.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Perl for the Masses?
by Nitsuj (Hermit) on Jul 25, 2001 at 22:00 UTC
    What do you mean partially interpretted?
    The scripts are scripts. Unless Perl performs a compilation procedure to change parts of your script into machine code at run time, it is totally interpretted. There's nothing wrong with this.

    Mind you, there are plenty of things you will never catch me doing in perl. It's a nice language, it's a useful language. I love it, BUT... You certainly CAN'T do some of the things that you can do in C or even in VB in perl. There is no inline assembly. Addressing memory is something you would have to do through a pm, with supplemental code. You'll never write an operating system or even load executable code (note I said load executable code, not run an executable), in perl, at least not perl 5.6, and not in any practical sort of way. Again, there's nothing wrong with this. Languages all have their niches. I would never do anything I use perl for in Prolog, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to abandon prolog. I think that people should be less "I'm a perl coder," "I'm a C/C++ coder," and more "I'm a coder, and I'm going to pick the appropriate language for this task." If nothing else, it is much more professional.

    Just Another Perl Backpacker
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      Perl does a compilation of your script to opcodes, then interprets those opcodes within a VM. (This, of course, is making the statement that all VM-compiled code is, at bottom, interpreted.) So, it's as compiled as Java is. The main difference between Perl and Java (as I see it and relevant to our discussion) is that Perl makes no pretensions to being a "compiled" language and, frankly, is proud of its interpretive nature. Java wants to play with "the big boys", so hypes up the fact that it compiles to some form of machine code. (That this machine cannot really exist for Java to have any claim of "better-than-C" is completely irrelevant.)
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