Why you shouldn’t dismiss Perl so quickly June 22, 2007
[Update] I was so focused on the Perl that I did Python a disservice. I’ve
tweaked the comments about Python based on Alexander’s comment which I’ve also
quoted below. The full quote from him is in the comments.
In
Graeme’s
comments the other day he mentioned that
…the syntax of Perl is so hideous and mysterious it produces
unmaintainable code (I know having maintained a multi-tier Perl
webapp).
And, sadly, he’s not the only one that shares that belief.
Perl has been written off by many talented developers because essentially every
piece of Perl code they’ve ever encountered is, well, crap. But, when you get
right down to it you’re basing your opinion of a language based on what people
write with it. It’s like saying that the English language sucks because there
are so many vile and crappy things written in it.
Perl is quite possibly the most flexible modern programming language. But, as
with anything,
great
power comes with great responsibility. Perl geeks believe
“There’s
more than one way to do it.” where as Python geeks follow a slightly
different way
The Python philosophy [is] that “There should be one– and
preferably only one –obvious way to do it.” That is, I can write a a multitude
of programs that do exactly the same thing in python in different styles and
methods, but there is only one way that is Pythonic… What python does is
emphasize a standard quality and method for doing various tasks instead of just
hacking it together. -
Alexander
Botero-Lowry
So, if you’re working with undisciplined idiots,
there’s no question, choose a language like Python. But, what happens when the
Pythonic way of expressing an idea doesn’t quite mesh with the idea you are
trying to express? In Python you’ll generally just have to deal and find a way
of coding what you wanted to express that isn’t very “Pythonic” or that ends up
being more verbose. In Perl there’s probably another handful of ways to express
the same concept. It’s like always having a kick ass thesaurus available. Yes,
this means you’ll eventually speak with words other people aren’t familiar with
yet or do things in ways others may not be so kosher with. But Perl is all about
letting you work in whatever way / style feels best to you. This can obviously
lead to situations where different people don’t agree with how something’s been
implemented even if it’s very sensible. What you need to keep in mind though, is
that the readability and maintainability are the
direct result of the experience, discipline, and consideration given for other
developers by the person writing the code. The problem with Perl is that
it makes it incredibly easy for a person with no discipline or limited
experience to express themselves badly…
very badly. Combine that with the fact
that it’s so easy to get something that works in Perl when you haven’t a clue
how to code well in any language and the
problem just compounds itself. It is very easy to write readable and
maintainable Perl code, but to do so requires discipline. It’s the difference
between giving a kindergartner a generous pallette of oil paints and giving one
to Michelangelo. The paint is capable of producing a masterpiece in his hands,
but the kindergartner is just going to make a finger-paintey mess. Don’t blame
the paint. Likewise, don’t blame Perl for the crap that idiots and newbs produce
with it. Instead, go buy them a copy of
Code
Complete and make every-one’s life a little bit better.
And yes, before anyone mentions it, Perl’s OOP tools seem a bit hackish and can
feel bolted on. But once you start to understand how they work they’re
incredibly flexible and let you do things that you couldn’t hope to touch in
Java. And yes, Perl does have a number of funky looking operators like $# but
you really only need to know a few of them. If you don’t like them you’ll be
happy to know that they weren’t to thrilled with the number of them when they
started planning Perl 6. Speaking of which, there are some truly awesome things
that have been put into Perl 6 and they’ve cleaned up a lot of the syntactic
issues people frequently bitch about…but there will still always be more than
one way to do “it” so you’ll still be able to write ugly code if you don’t know
any better.
A note about Python: Python rocks. It just has a very different mindset to Perl.
Python isn’t a language for “undisciplined idiots” as I implied above, but it is
a better language to have undisciplined idiots coding in because while their
code may still be crap you’ll at least be able to read it because of the
formatting limitations and because of the intentionally limited number of
choices for how to do any given thing.
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