Colin the Mathmo[Perl] combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript. -- Jamie Zawinski
Matt Lewis@ColinTheMathmo ... and the speed of BASIC.
(Maybe that's unfair - I haven't used Perl for years)
amiloradovsky@ColinTheMathmo it's industry-friendly implementation of Brainfuck
Roger Crew✅❌☑🗸❎✖✓✔"Perl is the programming language analog to vise-grip pliers:
Nearly always the *wrong* tool for the job, but wow is it useful..."
Also? Spend a few months in the bowels of Autoconf + M4 and I guarantee you'll stop complaining about Perl...
js@wrog @ColinTheMathmo I prefer autoconf and m4 over Perl. Autoconf has a clear use case for which there is no comparable replacement. For Perl, there’s many comparable replacements.
Elias Probst@ColinTheMathmo I developed #Perl quite a few years for a living.
This clearly showed, that the codestyle policies and their enforcement within a project/team makes all the difference for non-opionated languages like Perl.
Some of the best structured, most readable code I ever saw was in Perl - but at the same time, you can write valid Perl code which is indistinguishable from trying to #OCR paint splatters:
https://www.mcmillen.dev/sigbovik/
@ColinTheMathmo …and when it all goes wrong, there's a certain truth to this quote by Keith Bostic:
"Perl - The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption."
Mark Gardner@eliasp @ColinTheMathmo I suppose it depends on whether you like to form your own #programming opinions (individually or as a team) or whether you prefer them forced by the language itself
@eliasp @ColinTheMathmo BTW #Perl has two well-known tools to encourage and enforce #programming style and best practices, respectively:
• #PerlTidy: https://perltidy.github.io/perltidy
• #PerlCritic: http://perlcritic.com
Your project or team can use their reasonable defaults or further configure them to reflect and maintain the consistent application of your preferences. They also integrate with editors/IDEs, source control management, and author #testing.
@eliasp @ColinTheMathmo As an aside, it’s really strange when #developers that use #Linux and other #FOSS tools champion an ecosystem where a thousand distributions and desktop environments bloom, but in the next breath insist the best #ProgrammingLanguage is one that lashes them to One True #Programming Style.
Profoundly Nerdy@mjgardner @eliasp @ColinTheMathmo Don't forget CPAN::Audit to look for vulnerable libraries with open CVE's!
Oriel Jutty 
@eliasp @ColinTheMathmo For the sake of technical correctness, the last OCR example given as ...
this image is recognized as the string ;E,'__', which evaluates to the string E__ in Perl
... does not evaluate to E__. In scalar context it is just the string __; in list context it is a list of two strings, E and __.
@ColinTheMathmo Well, jwz also thinks regex is hard, so I'd take his opinions with a grain of salt. 😛
That said, there is something to be said for the power of C: Perl is the only "scripting" language I've seen that lets you use kernel system calls directly, even if your libc doesn't support them yet.
That said, there is something to be said for the power of C: Perl is the only "scripting" language I've seen that lets you use kernel system calls directly, even if your libc doesn't support them yet.
CubeRootOfTrue@ColinTheMathmo C combines the power of assembly language with the flexibility of assembly language
mirabilos@CubeRootOfTrue @ColinTheMathmo unfortunately, C is much less flexible than asm :( and less powerful of course as well
Well, it was a joke of course, but GCC can handle this:
int fun(void)
{
int my_var = 10;
register int my_int = 15;
__asm__ __volatile__(
" lock ;\n"
" addl %1,%0 ;\n"
: "=m" (my_var)
: "ir" (my_int), "m" (my_var)
);
return my_var;
}
so ... it's not straight C ... umm, or flexible, or readable ...
@CubeRootOfTrue @ColinTheMathmo yeah, doesn’t count