Is it just me or does Perl fscking SUCK?

[njcajun]

Was the goal of creating Perl to form a language so cryptic, so ugly, so sloppy and unintuitive, that only the most pretensious, obnoxious snobby-*** programmer would ever bother to learn it?

Have you seen this crap? /\s -ne|t %4... what the hell does that mean to ANYBODY. I used to use perl a little bit, though I didn't use it enough to get very good at it. As soon as I left the job I needed it for, I swore I would learn EVERY other language if it meant I wouldn't have to use that one.

Maybe it IS intuitive for some stuff, but I've personally never seen it. I'd rather edit C code than look at Perl.

If you have a good grasp of Shell programming, and know C/C++, Python, or Java, what is the benefit to using Perl?

I still have my Perl books, so if someone can really illustrate a reason to use Perl over, say, bash, without the typical 'it's better' or the unqualified 'it's faster', then I'll be glad to take another hard look at it.

If all I get is bull**** flames from hardcore Perl scripters, then I'll be forced to believe that Perl was a Dilbertism... it was an idea that IT managers got sold on, so today's Perl users are just 'pledges' in this fraternal organization who, once passed the initiation, will be empowered to send administrators who come in below them through the same hell they went through.

Thanks for reading my rant.

[micxz]

I agree with most of what you said. It is cryptic and hard to read sometimes. But, my only agument is the that if you learn the basics of perl, you can easily write small scripts that run cleanup jobs or maintainance etc. You could write simple scripts to handle your websites needs. I don't know very much perl yet, I've written lots of small programs to help my day to day needs. I think perl just for some people maybe. But it's just as cryptic as any programming language. :rolleyes:

[Tyr-7BE]

Perl can get freakin complicated, but it can be equally as powerful. Seven lines to descramble a dvd in perl? Wow. Have you seen the code? If you have then you'll understand why it works. I can't string together 5 coherent characters.
However, if you've ever seen smaller simpler perl scripts, the more basic perl is actually quite nice. All variables are marked with $, and it's very intuitive. I'm not sure where the breakpoint is, but somewhere along the line it goes from one extreme to the other!

[bdl]

First off, I love Perl, but I'm not gonna flame ya for your opinion, if you don't like it, don't use it. The only thing I do have a problem with is: shouldn't this be in RANTS?

[Strike]

Originally posted by bdl:
First off, I love Perl, but I'm not gonna flame ya for your opinion, if you don't like it, don't use it. The only thing I do have a problem with is: shouldn't this be in RANTS?

Yes it should... so to Rants it goes.