Funny Papers
cfenollosa.com
cfenollosa.com
> novices that were programming for the first time [had to] write simple programs using common program constructs (e.g., loops, conditionals, functions, variables, parameters)
They had to do this in different languages:
- Perl
- Randomo: a language "where some of the syntax was chosen with a random number generator and the ASCII table"
- Quorum: "where the syntax, semantics, and API designs change in correspondence to the latest academic research and literature on programming language usability"
Users did significantly better in Quorum, but there was no statistically significant difference between Randomo and Perl!
Not saying this is a meaningful study or result*, but man is it good for poking fun at Perl :-)
* woa, novices understand Quorum's "repeat 12 times" better than Perl's "for ($i = 0; $i <= $12; $i++){"? What a surprise! It would have been more interesting to see if people with no programming exposure can get stuff done meaningfully faster after e.g. two sessions of three hours' practice in one of the languages. And don't give a complicated three-segment for loop example when perl literally has a "for (1..6) {" construct.