Re:Why Perl?
by ominous_prime on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @12:23PM
(#3239075)
I think this issue is where a lot of the schism comes from - not everyone's thoughts translate well into perl.
I've tried to "get" perl a few times, and I also get tasked with maintaining legacy perl code from time to time. Perl is the only language I can't readily use without a few books and perldoc.perl.org handy. It just doesn't fit my brain - yet I can jump around in other languages with little trouble.
Maybe it's just me, but I imagine that there's others that have a similar dissonance with the language.
Sometimes it takes a while to click. I abhorred `map` for the longest time, but nowadays i use it everywhere; since i read the SICP and suddenly grokked them.
As a Perl hacker, I couldn't agree more, and that's the main point I guess. Sure, CPAN is awesome (there is even a module for controlling USB rocket launchers - http://search.cpan.org/~pen/Device-USB-MissileLauncher-Rocke...) and everything is open source, but the thing I love most about Perl is the fact that thought is translated into code very quickly and naturally. Something just clicks and feels right.
I suppose that's why despite being fluent in several languages, I always come back to it.