Re: OT: Auxlangs (was Re: "Esperanto V.2")

On 3/27/06, Joe <joe@...> wrote:
> You're right, I suppose.  I guess I meant ultra-conciseness, APL-style.
Good example.  APL is nothing if not concise.  Not what I'd call
readable, though. :)

> And, yes, for simple things like 'Hello, world', it's more readable, but
> for more complicated things, while it is perhaps easier/quicker to
> write, it is significantly harder to read.
Assuming your "it" refers to Perl here, I will have to take issue once
again with your generalization.  There are several design choices
which have led to Perl's reputation as a "write-only" language, but
the largest contributor to that image, IME, is its sheer popularity
among the uninitiated.  When the web exploded, Perl exploded with it,
rapidly becoming *the* language for server-side scripting in the days
of CGI.  Which meant that an awful lot of Perl code got written by
people who had no clue what they were doing and therefore wrote
terrible code. :)

A good programmer writes legible code in any language, and Perl is no
exception.  I'd put my Perl code up against anyone's Python in a
legibility contest any time - not that I have any idea how to judge
such a thing objectively. :)

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>