The problem with Perl and "There's More Than One Way To Do It" is that to do maintenance on other people's code, you have to learn Every Single One.

That's not the only problem with Perl.

Oh, I could claim for hours and hours about problems with Perl, but that's the ur-problem it kept giving me...

Maintaining perl may be the single worst programming job evar. In a list that includes cleaning up VBScript.

D'A

There are a lot of ways to do it in Perl. Sadly most Perl programmers strive to do it the most horrible way possible.

I maintain perl, and I don't need to know every single one. among other things, I train incoming coders to do it my preferred way. ( :

Vynce: Ahh, the advantage of being early in an organization, or having an organization with good coding standards.

I don't think this is a problem with Perl, so much, as a problem with ALL programming languages. There are dozens of coding styles, documentation styles, etc., and even strongly documented standards written for a specific language (e.g. Java) doesn't garuntee the too-many-cooks problem.

This is a problem only solved by strong management and style enforcement. It isn't a language problem.

Perl is pretty notorious for the problem, but it hardly stands alone. And this is a statement of the problem at the wrong conceptual level.

"I don't think this is a problem with Perl, so much, as a problem with ALL programming languages. There are dozens of coding styles, documentation styles, etc., and even strongly documented standards written for a specific language (e.g. Java) doesn't garuntee the too-many-cooks problem."

I think that Perl affords code complexity more than the norm. TMTOWTDI and the maverick, "we don't need no discipline" attitude of the Perl community encourage this among new users of the language.

D'A

Perl is executable line noise.

Perl source files should be `chmod a-r *.pl` by the interpreter.

Making a C-to-perl converter earns you props. Making a perl-to-C converter earns you the death penalty.

Perl's parser is where syntax errors go after death if they led an immoral life.

So, tell me: Do you feel you have moved the debate forward?

D'A

Does every single comment need to move the debate forward, D'A?

Jonathan: Absolutely not. But some comments are a waste of space, and I include unreasoned religious screeds in this category.

D'A

Fair enough.

Let it be known that due to company policy, I work with perl as often as I do java.

As an indicator of scale, I maintain a Java-based industrial process training simulator with more than 8 MB of java source, plus another 19000 LOC of a custom internal scripting language that has no IDE more complex than vi.

:(

So, yes. If I've made someone smile, I've moved the conversation forward.