Re: [9fans] Re: Perl5 & kenji arisawa's perl question

[Greg Shubin <gshubin@sonic.net>]

Boyd Roberts wrote:

> From: George Michaelson <ggm@dstc.edu.au>
>
> > boyd@planete.net (Boyd Roberts) writes:
> >
> > >gotta be a better idea than the perl port :-)
> >
> > but would you of neccessity say the same thing of a python port? or
> > a tcl port? seems like it might be better to be explicit about
> > criticizing a language, not the idea of porting language(s) per se.
> >
>
> i'm criticising the language, not languages.  perl is an abortion;
> it is unreadable, the grammar is ghastly and it violates the 'tools'
> approach.
>
> i understand why sysadmins like it.  i just won't use it,
> although i have bug-fixed it.
>
> i would also object to csh, sendmail, vi, *rn, readnews, X
> and various other pieces of unix trash being ported to plan 9.
> it's plan 9, if you want unix, you know where to find it.

As a Plan 9 newbie, that's one of the things that I don't quite get. On
one hand it seems that the "official" position is Plan 9 contains
everything you need. But then I see everyone porting their favorite
tools to it. As you point out, pretty soon it will have as much bloat as
Un*x. Is there an official position on what should and shouldn't be
ported?

(Personally I like the features of bash (completion, history using arrow
keys, emacs command editing, etc). )

At the risk of escalating language flame wars, what's your opinion of
(wait a second, let me get into my bomb shelter) C++?