Larry Wall <·····@netlabs.com> wrote:
In article <··········@utic.unicomp.net> ···@utic.unicomp.net (Daniel Finster) writes:
: BTW, Larry Wall should be shot. Along with Bill Joy and Eric Allman.
Why, just because you guys frittered away a 20-year headstart?
No, because Perl--like Vi and Sendmail before it--is an ill-conceived,
barely-working heap of dross. Perl, like Unix, is slow and disgusting
to use. Perl takes up as much memory as any Lisp system, and with
less functionality. Perl, like TECO before it, has a
hard-to-remember, and even harder to read syntax--Perl weenies (like
TECO hackers), enjoy obfuscation. Unfortunately, Perl can't even get
obfuscation right. TECO has confused more and better programmers than
Perl could _ever_ hope to.
Weenix unies think Perl is the best thing come down the pipe in Unix
administration, though it uses as much memory and MORE system
resources than, say, Emacs 19. Yet listen to them froth and foam at
the very mention of someone using Emacs on their machines. Emacs is
big and complex, but at least it has a lot of useful, well-integrated
functions.
You folks really ought to have taken over the world by now. It seems all
computer languages are created equal, but Lisp is more equal than others.
Lisp is the straw-golem of programming languages; there are many firm
misconceptions people have about it, such as that Lisp compilers are
slow, and produce poor code, or that Lisp syntax is hard to read.
Read any C/C++ vs. Lisp flamewar for examples of more.
I don't think anyone wants to see (and fewer would want to read) a
massive Perl vs. Lisp flamewar consuming comp.lang.perl and
comp.lang.lisp, so therefore, in the interests of avoiding such a
cascade, and to remind people that Perl is computer heroin, I've
redirected followups to `junk'. Please use mail.
Couldn't understand Perl, eh?
--
Ken Corey ·······@exu.ericsson.se 214/907-5841 Speaking for everyone...
Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're
alive.
-- John Sloan