Perl certainly has many virtues worth extolling and most of us have felt the need to sing its praises at one time or another. Doing so in this forum is relatively safe as you won't get much resistance. You are, as the saying goes, "preaching to the choir."

That's not the case everywhere though and, as with operating systems, editors, window managers, and programming methodologies, every language has its followers. On Usenet or IRC, language fanaticism leads to little more than a good, hearty, old-fashioned, flame war. In a professional atmosphere, it might cost you a contract or a job.

I think it is prudent to caution novices not to get too wrapped up in a language's strengths without also making an effort to understand that language's weaknesses. Knowledge of both will help you choose the right tools, write better programs, be a more effective advocate, and win (or at least survive) more flame wars.

Edit: I meant "preaching to the choir" not "singing to the choir." Changed.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

In reply to Re: Passion for Perl by sauoq
in thread Passion for Perl by kelan

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.