From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 25370 invoked from network); 18 Nov 2021 00:38:18 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 18 Nov 2021 00:38:18 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 948E39C852; Thu, 18 Nov 2021 10:38:15 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 934A69C2E5; Thu, 18 Nov 2021 10:35:16 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 170B19C2E5; Thu, 18 Nov 2021 10:35:14 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0CD629C29F for ; Thu, 18 Nov 2021 10:35:13 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 9CD6B35E4CA; Wed, 17 Nov 2021 16:35:12 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2021 16:35:12 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: Rob Pike Message-ID: <20211118003512.GN15051@mcvoy.com> References: <202111161754.1AGHsGsN929905@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <50F3E958-F0A4-4895-B1BC-41A2644A074A@oclsc.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] Book Recommendation [ reallly inscrutable languages ] X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: TUHS main list Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" I'll defend perl, at least perl4, vigorously. I wrote a lot of code in it on 20mhz SPARCs. Yeah, like any kitchen sink language you have to develop a style, but it is possible. All of Solaris 2.0 development happened under a source management system I wrote, NSElite, that was almost 100% perl4. There was one C program, that Marc might like, that took 2 SCCS files that had the initial part of the graph in common but the recent nodes were different in each file, and zippered them together into a new SCCS file that had the newer nodes on a branch. It was F.A.S.T compared to the edit/delta cycles you'd do if you did it by hand. My perl4 was maintainable, I fixed bugs in it quickly. When it happened, perl4 was a God send, as much as I love awk, perl was far more useful for stuff that awk just didn't want to handle. On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 09:21:49AM +1100, Rob Pike wrote: > Perl certainly had its detractors, but for a few years there it was the > lingua franca of system administration. > > -rob > > > On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 8:21 AM Dan Cross wrote: > > > On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 3:54 PM Warner Losh wrote: > > > >> On Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 1:48 PM Dan Stromberg wrote: > >> > >>> On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 11:35 AM Norman Wilson wrote: > >>> > >>>> Wasn't Perl created to fill this void? > >>>> > >>>> Void? I thought Perl was created to fill a much-needed gap. > >>>> > >>> There was and is a need for something to sit between Shell and C. But > >>> it needn't be filled by Perl. > >>> > >>> The chief problem with Perl, as I see it, is it's like 10 languages > >>> smashed together. To write it, you only need to know one of the 10. But > >>> to read it, you never know what subset you're going to see until you're > >>> deep in the code. > >>> > >>> Perl is the victim of an experiment in exuberant, Opensource design, > >>> where the bar to adding a new feature was troublingly low. > >>> > >>> It was undeniably influential. > >>> > >> > >> It's what paved the way for python to fill that gap... > >> > > > > I feel that Perl, and to a lesser extent Tcl, opened the floodgates for a > > number of relatively lightweight "scripting" languages that sat between C > > and the shell in terms of their functionality and expressive power. From > > that group, the one I liked best was Ruby, but it got hijacked by Rails and > > Python swooped in and stole its thunder. > > > > - Dan C. > > > > -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm