Comments on: Shocking news from the Learn Perl or Die Association

Shocking news from the Learn Perl or Die Association

riffola — Wed, 14 May 2003 09:50:55 -0800

Test shows 99.99% of US high school seniors can't read Perl. The first part asked students to translate easy Perl phrases into their standard English equivalent, and the second section required students to produce a simple MP3 player in Perl. "I didn't know what the hell any of it meant," said one Senior, "it had lots of slashes and periods and brackets. It was so confusing. I'm feeling rather nauseous." Come on USA, if you can't read Perl, just how are you going to fight for your right to party?

By: Salmonberry

Salmonberry — Wed, 14 May 2003 09:52:19 -0800

I think it's something to do with pancakes. That's my theory...I just can't get "&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)[$". That's the confusing part.

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Wed, 14 May 2003 09:59:06 -0800

I'm sick of this anti-america crap! why don't you go back to california?

By: padraigin

padraigin — Wed, 14 May 2003 10:02:27 -0800

Jeez. They told me all I needed to know was Spanish, and I'd be just fine.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 14 May 2003 10:05:04 -0800

i can't read perl either. but i couldn't read C when i used to look at code either. i bought a book, and perused the C columns in PCMagazine (back when it used to be a PC/programming geeks rag instead of the MS/Intel cheerleader it is these days) and before long i was reading and writing C. how ANYBODY could expect a non-geek high school student without prior training to have the vaguest clue what they were looking at is beyond me, and makes me wonder to what purpose such a test was intended. guess i'll go read the link now. ... ... ... ok. humor was the purpose. bbspot indeed! well, the q bought it hook line and sinker and never read the link before spewing. i'm going to post this ANYWAY so y'all (specially riffy!) can have a good laugh at my expense when i stumble into #mefi this evening!

By: xmutex

xmutex — Wed, 14 May 2003 10:12:15 -0800

s/metafilter/slashdot/ig;

By: vito90

vito90 — Wed, 14 May 2003 10:12:44 -0800

"Perl - The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption." -Keith Bostic

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Wed, 14 May 2003 10:32:24 -0800

Jeez. They told me all I needed to know was Spanish, and I'd be just fine. ¿Como?

By: MrBaliHai

MrBaliHai — Wed, 14 May 2003 10:37:44 -0800

I can't read Perl, but I can read Cray assembly language [neener!]

By: NortonDC

NortonDC — Wed, 14 May 2003 10:41:41 -0800

Perl coders can't read each other's code anyway.

By: chuq

chuq — Wed, 14 May 2003 10:43:22 -0800

¿Como? Quoi?

By: konolia

konolia — Wed, 14 May 2003 10:52:53 -0800

What's Perl?

By: timeistight

timeistight — Wed, 14 May 2003 11:02:47 -0800

What's Perl? It's either a religon or a cult, depending who you ask.

By: ursus_comiter

ursus_comiter — Wed, 14 May 2003 11:07:04 -0800

What's Perl? Perl stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. Of course, that's not terribly meaningful. It's a scripting language that is really excellent for manipulating lots and lots of text. Years ago I used it to grab text data and format it into web pages. It can do all sorts of handy things for you. If I didn't have to constantly swap my admin hat out for a helpdesk hat, I'd be using perl all over the servers I run to help me keep things shipshape. Alas, no time.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 14 May 2003 11:11:11 -0800

swap my admin hat out for a helpdesk hat hello? my cupholder broke off. and what does "Fatal Error Reading Drive C" mean?

By: eyebeam

eyebeam — Wed, 14 May 2003 11:11:16 -0800

This is a) not very funny, and b) waaay too narrow in its appeal for a front page post.

By: drstrangelove

drstrangelove — Wed, 14 May 2003 11:21:30 -0800

Soyuz nerushimiy respublik svobodnykh...

By: dabitch

dabitch — Wed, 14 May 2003 11:22:01 -0800

lets make it more narrow then here's the swedish version of it.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 14 May 2003 11:24:43 -0800

unlink @eyebeam;

By: timeistight

timeistight — Wed, 14 May 2003 11:26:34 -0800

This is a) not very funny, and b) waaay too narrow in its appeal for a front page post. I disagree on both counts.

By: ursus_comiter

ursus_comiter — Wed, 14 May 2003 11:33:38 -0800

what does "Fatal Error Reading Drive C" mean? That it's time to get a Macintosh. ;)

By: PrinceValium

PrinceValium — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:06:05 -0800

Perl stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. You make it sound like it's only good for grepping. *scratches chin* aha!

By: Ayn Marx

Ayn Marx — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:12:43 -0800

Ruby.

By: soundofsuburbia

soundofsuburbia — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:15:43 -0800

Some Perl poetry for y'all.

By: kablam

kablam — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:15:47 -0800

10 REM ***BASIC PROGRAM FOLLOWS*** 20 ' 30 PRINT "Learn Computer Languages Today!" 40 PRINT 50 PRINT "So you're ready for tomorrow's job market!" 60 PRINT 70 PRINT "With a skill that's NEVER obsolete!" 80 PRINT 90 PRINT "Like knowing how to read Latin." 100 PRINT 110 PRINT "Quis, Quis, Quid, etc." 120 END

By: the aloha

the aloha — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:21:55 -0800

one time in class back in high school i was not paying attention and i had an idea for a script i was working on... the teacher thought i was writing a note and tried to read it to the rest of the class.

By: Ayn Marx

Ayn Marx — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:22:40 -0800

Perl stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language Um, well, no; Perl stands perl. L. Wall wanted to use the name Pearl, but that was taken, so he droped the 'a'. Later, he and others invented backronyms for the name.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:24:14 -0800

aloha, these days, the teacher would have called homeland security on you and your script would have been sent to NSA for decryption as a possible terrorist communication.

By: riffola

riffola — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:28:16 -0800

I *love* quonsar

By: ursus_comiter

ursus_comiter — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:35:41 -0800

script would have been sent to NSA for decryption as a possible terrorist communication. Like this poor kid...

By: timeistight

timeistight — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:39:38 -0800

And a nice geeky thread descends into the political poo.

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:41:10 -0800

Perl - Pathetically Eclectic Rubbish Lister

By: DrJohnEvans

DrJohnEvans — Wed, 14 May 2003 12:49:39 -0800

All languages are easy to learn. I mean, if this guy can do it, who couldn't? Metafilter: Narrowing appeal since 1999.

By: briggsb

briggsb — Wed, 14 May 2003 13:09:50 -0800

About time you guys finally found BBspot.

By: Satapher

Satapher — Wed, 14 May 2003 13:30:03 -0800

everything is easy once you know how to do it

By: filmgoerjuan

filmgoerjuan — Wed, 14 May 2003 13:41:38 -0800

Perl's slogan is "There's more than one way to do it"...my follow-up is "...and I don't understand any of them". I think Perl was best summed up by a quote I once read to the effect of "I've been programming Perl for 8 years, so I'm pretty much a beginner". Damn that language is cryptic!

By: MrAnonymous

MrAnonymous — Wed, 14 May 2003 13:54:27 -0800

Hey, take it easy. A lot of high school seniors have trouble reading English.

By: rusty

rusty — Wed, 14 May 2003 14:35:40 -0800

Perl's reputation for being cryptic and unreadable is greatly exaggerated, and tends to be repeated mainly by people who have no experience with it. Just thought I'd throw that in.

By: Joeforking

Joeforking — Wed, 14 May 2003 15:45:45 -0800

This is a) not very funny, and b) waaay too narrow in its appeal for a front page post. Geekfilter.

By: eyebeam

eyebeam — Wed, 14 May 2003 15:57:31 -0800

After I posted my comment above, I realized that just the other day I posted an FPP about a mathematical solution to Poincare's Conjecture. And I'm griping about narrow appeal? D'oh. Please forgive me. I'm cranky today.

By: dg

dg — Wed, 14 May 2003 16:23:34 -0800

I thought it was pretty simple - knit one, perl one. or am I missing the point? MrAnonymous is probably right - it was not reading perl they had trouble with, it was writing it in English that threw them.

By: thebabelfish

thebabelfish — Wed, 14 May 2003 17:15:27 -0800

I'd have to agree with rusty. While Perl can be made cryptic and hard to read, so can just about any language. Most of the Perl I see is quite nice. Despite this, a favorite quote of mine: "Perl is like sneezing Cheerios through a fan onto a wall."

By: NortonDC

NortonDC — Wed, 14 May 2003 17:22:37 -0800

rusty, I do have experience with it. I coded database/datawarehousing ETL tools with it for a living. I just might know what I'm speaking of. Part of comes from the fact that there are so many different styles accomodated by the language that coders using divergent styles have a LOT of adjusting to do when reading code they didn't write.

By: thebabelfish

thebabelfish — Wed, 14 May 2003 17:30:50 -0800

In all of the Perl code not written by me that I've read, I never seem to have to adjust much. Of course, it is entirely possible that I've just never read any really "divergent" code, so take that with a grain of salt.

By: troybob

troybob — Wed, 14 May 2003 18:15:47 -0800

If they had trouble reading Perl, it was probably because the code was poorly commented. Well-commented code can be understood by anyone.

By: shadow45

shadow45 — Wed, 14 May 2003 20:13:22 -0800

They say perl is the glue that holds the internet together I think most perl zealots sniff said glue a little too much... oh, and in all honesty aren't regular expressions to ultimately blame for perl's nastiness? No-one's forced to do it without linebreaks and with short-hand variable names. Perl doesn't have to be ugly Aside from those 2-3 liner crypt scripts in perl, those are k-rad.

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Thu, 15 May 2003 08:26:32 -0800

in all honesty aren't regular expressions to ultimately blame for perl's nastiness? Oh god, no! perl is lovely when using hashes and regexes freely. It's how the language should be used. If you're writing perl code like C, then it does look ugly. If you're using it like perl, then it looks great and is easy to read.

By: rusty

rusty — Thu, 15 May 2003 10:01:06 -0800

Oops! Language war! I didn't mean to be zealous, despite personally loving perl. Yeah, it's totally possible to write really ugly perl, and I've written and read some of that myself (hint: don't look at Comments.pm in Scoop. Just... don't.). It just isn't necessary to do that, was all I was saying. When handled by a competent codewright, perl can be quite beautiful and easy to understand. I was just reacting to the inevitable "perl is ugly" quotes that always show up when it's mentioned. That idea has gotten weirdly out of hand, in an almost urban-legend kind of way, where it's mostly (not entirely, but mostly) now repeated secondhand by people who have just heard it repeated elsewhere. Or so it seems to me anyway.

By: briggsb

briggsb — Thu, 15 May 2003 10:46:35 -0800

For bonus points, does anyone recognize the perl code that appears in the story?

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Thu, 15 May 2003 11:11:29 -0800

yeah, it's on my wall here at work :)

By: Freaky

Freaky — Thu, 15 May 2003 17:47:17 -0800

I find Perl ugly, but not because of all the $_-/ crap (hey, I love regexp, the most $_-/ language ever!), but because it's a rather mediocre, overcomplex language with the worst parts of just about any language you care to mention mixed in. I'm not going to spend time worrying about whether I need to dereference some hash(ref) before trying to access it, and what context to access it in, or faffing about getting arguments out of an obscurely named list, or putting up with the silly way OO is handled -- I'd rather use Ruby and actually get something done without wanting to ram my head through a Wall afterwards. If I wanted to worry about all that extra cruft, I'd use C :)

By: phong3d

phong3d — Fri, 16 May 2003 05:24:06 -0800

kablam, you forgot:
115 GOTO 10