I suspect it's also partly an artifact of the article being from 1998. :)

I find perl substantially more approachable than Python, provided I don't have to read anyone else's code.

> provided I don't have to read anyone else's code.

That's a hell of a caveat. :) As I get older, I find I spend more time reading code than writing it (even though most of it's my own), and I find Python's sheer readability indispensable.

As I get older and use perl for longer, I find that it gets easier to read other people's perl code. I find it still hard to read some of the php code out there. I think messy php code outdoes the messes I've seen in perl, and a big part of this is because there was no standard for php includes/modules for a while.

Its not, basically because if you have bad programmers working for your then you have bigger problems than choosing a language.

And if you have good programmers, then readability isn't a problem. Not even a thing to think about.

>>And if you have good programmers, then readability isn't a problem

Hrm, I'd argue against that.

I know better programmers than me, whose code I hate to work with. Also for Python.

But you seem to define "good programmer" as someone who also comments and documents, so I guess you're by definition correct. :-)

Edit: Yeah, "itsnotme". The fault is rather the idiot bosses that let the smart idiots get away with it... But with non-idiot bosses, you won't have readability problems in Perl either.

Yeah, well bad commenters come in three kinds:

Those who write too few comments.

Those who write too many comments.

Those who write the wrong comments.

Of course, those are not mutually exclusive.......

According to me good code is what makes the comment unnecessary. And writing such a thing requires understanding many things. And those things are language agnostic.

Like some one mentioned in this thread, languages tend to be judged by the quality of code produced by their worst user.

For once you can write unreadable code in any language. Even in C and Lisp. In fact there you can create bigger problems and more unreadable code.

You still needs comments that tell what the content of a code file is supposed to do, no matter how clear the code is.

(And in scripting languages which doesn't declare parameters, like Python and old style Perl, you need to document what the parameters are.)

Having good programmers who can't agree on a consistent style is problematic, but good programmers can follow a reasonable style guide, even if they have quibbles about it.

Oh please can I quote you on that?

What I used to say, which probably other people do too, is "Perl is a best language to write programs in so long as you can fit it in one line of code!"