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Comment by 72deluxe | Hacker News Reader

With things like this, it makes me glad I write C++ (and that gets bashed enough!). I do not miss the days of maintaining a Perl codebase (and trying to decipher what on earth code was doing). This is insane.

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Perl is a language sufficiently different from the main bulk of languages that one must make an earnest effort to learn it before one can read it. Your complaint is similar to someone declaring Japanese insane just because of the way its writing system looks like gigantic and erratic complexity to the inexperienced.

Ah yes but it is mainly because many languages borrow C-style syntax so you can understand it without many brain gymnastics.

You are correct, however. I did try learning Japanese and was just as unsuccessful at that as with Perl; I did maintain an old Perl codebase at one point and learned enough to get by but I would never jump at the opportunity to do it again!

How much of the reference docs and available books did you read? Or did you, like many, just read code and hunt for the bits that weren't obvious?

To be fair Japanese writing is insane and they know it. It's far too difficult.

You pretty clearly have an emotional attachment to Perl, which is sort of lovely to see, but it's causing you to be undeservedly condescending to people who don't have that attachment, which is not lovely.

> to be undeservedly condescending ... is not lovely.

It seems like you have just diagnosed someone's behavior without them asking for a diagnosis and your diagnosis is that they are being condescending. See the problem there?

And this followed what some might call undeserved condescension: "Pulling out my hair in frustration from trying to deal with Perl written by other people saved me all manner of haircut money in the 90s.".

If you think I'm being undeservedly condescending, and this isn't lovely, perhaps we can find another way to talk about Perl 6?

You can torture my words rhetorically to score emotional points, but I don't know what you think you prove by it.

If you find my jocular expression of my very real experiences with Perl to be condescension, I'm going to have to let you know that I don't believe Perl to be all that worried about it, incapable as it is of having an emotional state.

I'm sorry if my comment seemed condescending, but it is a sad fact that many people learned Perl only by reading code and looking up small bits and pieces they don't immediately grok (instead of turning towards and consuming, complete and well-written learning resources both in the perldoc references and books) and then walk away with completely skewed impressions and share them with the world at large.

I wish i had a more polite way of pointing this out when people make complaints, but i have not found one yet. Maybe you have a suggestion?

So what is the advantage of using a language that is hard to learn and hard to understand?

It's hard to learn, but not necessarily hard to understand. That hard learning experience theoretically pays dividends in productivity later as you and more succinctly and quickly express your intent.

It's not hard to learn, as evidenced by all the people writing functioning perl after reading only a few scripts. It just takes a long time to learn entirely. ;)

>and trying to decipher what on earth code was doing

I have the same feeling when gcc shit itself STL compiling errors.

I still have that, but thankfully get to use clang instead which has more helpful messages (although you do need to look about 5 errors deep in the error tree to get to the nub of the problem).

This is what comments and docstrings/doctests are for.

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