Can Lisp do What Perl Does Easily?

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/fc76ebab1cb2f863

by omouse • 19 years ago

25 45 19 years ago

groups.google.com

Erik Naggum on why Perl sucks :D

SwellJoe12• 19 years ago

Note the date. In 2000, Perl was, by far, the leading scripting language (and language for the web). I'm certain that if this rant were written today, it would target PHP, and possibly even Ruby and Python. Ironically, perhaps, modern Perl is more lisp-like than any other mainstream language (aside from JavaScript, in some ways), and so this article merely says, "Mainstream languages that come pretty close to Lisp are brain-damaged and you'd have to be a particular breed of crazy to use it for anything."

shiro• 19 years ago

I love his rant. There are so many colorful expressions in it that even if you don't agree with what he says, you can enjoy how he says it.

Here's another my favorite, Erik on C++, from 1998: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/917737b7cc...

SwellJoe12• 19 years ago

Awesome. He's convinced that using a language (C++ or Perl, depending on the rant in question) can cause damage to ones cognitive processes! He is a colorful one.

I'm pretty sure I'd feel dumber after having worked in PHP for the past six months on our new website, if that were true.

sandoh• 19 years ago

"I actually think C++ is ideal only for programmers without any ethics."

This guy is a little bit extreme.

omouse4• 19 years ago

and so this article merely says, "Mainstream languages that come pretty close to Lisp are brain-damaged and you'd have to be a particular breed of crazy to use it for anything."

Wrong. This reddit comment nailed it: http://programming.reddit.com/info/2mm0n/comments/c2mo30

Erik's argument is that Perl incentivizes The Wrong Way, and disincentivizes The Right Way. It's not about coercion, it's about incentives. "it's not that perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done." --jemfinch

SwellJoe12• 19 years ago

"Wrong."

Very concise. And it's always good to back it up with the assertions of some random dude on Reddit.

lupin_sansei5• 19 years ago

> In 2000, Perl was, by far, the leading scripting language (and language for the web).

It still is (excepting PHP)

http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm

Goladus6• 19 years ago

In what ways is Perl Lisp-like?

The more I learn Lisp, the less it seems like Perl at all.

SwellJoe12• 19 years ago

Perhaps learning more Perl would solve that problem.

jimbokun• 19 years ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html

Scroll down to Appendix: Power.

The Perl solution is close to the Lisp solution in terms of brevity. The solution in other languages tend to be longer or the problem can't be solved at all.

Choice quote:

"In the rivalry between Perl and Python, the claim of the Python hackers seems to be that that Python is a more elegant alternative to Perl, but what this case shows is that power is the ultimate elegance: the Perl program is simpler (has fewer elements), even if the syntax is a bit uglier."

aston• 19 years ago

the unemployed programmer had a problem. "I know", said the programmer, "I'll just learn perl." the unemployed programmer now had two problems.

One of the best programming quotes. Ever.

SwellJoe12• 19 years ago

It was better the first couple hundred times I heard it.

Jamie Zawinski's from 1997 is the most famous in modern times:

"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems."

But, it dates back even further to a "D. Tilbrook" from before 1988:

"Whenever faced with a problem, some people say `Lets use AWK.' Now, they have two problems."

There's an XML variant that had quite a lot of popularity in the early 00's.

omouse4• 19 years ago

It's funny because they're all accurate. XML is an ugly beast, regular expressions can be amazingly obfuscated. I don't know about AWK, but I'm guessing that it's as ugly as Perl.

vikram2• 19 years ago

This applies more to lisp than perl. More likely to be unemployed if you only know lisp. Not many companies use lisp. A lot of them use perl (though this is changing to ruby and python).

epi0Bauqu3• 19 years ago

The date should really be noted in the title of the post.

omouse4• 19 years ago

Why?

SwellJoe12• 19 years ago

Because the ranter was pissed that his favorite language was not very viable commercially, and a language he strongly dislikes was the most popular language on the web, with many job opportunities. Bitterness colors his logic.

epi0Bauqu3• 19 years ago

Two reasons: First, everything has context and time is often a big part of it. Setting that context up for people is helpful. Second, this site is entitled Hacker News and this is not News. While people will argue old things should still be included, and that's fine, I think old things should at least be marked as such by putting the year of publication next to them.

epi0Bauqu3• 19 years ago

For Web stuff, I pretty much exclusively program in Perl and JavaScript when left on my own. I like both a lot. I really don't get the anti-Perl reputation as portrayed in this article, although as noted it is really old. Maybe it's just my Perl code, but I can pick up code from 10 years ago and understand it fine, and my Perl code never seems to gets out of hand as described in this rant. You always have wonder with rants what the author was actually doing...

whacked_new• 19 years ago

I don't think any particular language causes brain damage like some more strongly-opinioned people would say. But some make it easier to write nutty code. It doesn't mean everybody writes nutty code.

Just like how being surrounded by junk food predisposes you to poor dietary habits and possibly in consequence, heart problems, it's not impossible to eat healthy and stay fit.

Shunning the environment/language/tool is understandable, but equating it to the root of the problem always involves some exaggeration. The NASA code released not long ago had GOTOs in it and I don't think it costed lives.

Goladus6• 19 years ago

The author of that rant is a purist. He believes that if everyone would slow down, learn Lisp values and implement them in their code, so that eventually they, and perhaps more importantly the next generation will be far better able to focus on essential difficulties rather than incidental ones.

His argument is that perl programmers are all busy solving immediate problems that would have never been problems to begin with if everyone had been using Lisp the way it was meant to be used. And they're often not solving problems in Lisp-fashion.

lupin_sansei5• 19 years ago

These ranters never actually show you any perl code that is particularly ugly and compare it against some lisp/python/ruby code that solves the problem more cleanly.

I'm sure that there are areas where other languages' solutions are much cleaner than an equivalent perl one, but can anybody actually show us one? Especially a lisp one.

SwellJoe12• 19 years ago

pg wrote a few in an essay. (And, unremarkably, though I'm going to remark on it anyway, Perl stands up as well as any other mainstream language to the onslaught. Perl 6 does even better, though I think one of the biggest side effects of Perl 6 is going to be a huge influx of Haskell coders because of Pugs.)

edu2• 19 years ago

And when will be Perl 6 ready?

lupin_sansei5• 19 years ago

Wow not a single example!

sgraham• 19 years ago

The only concrete assertions I see there are that regular expressions are error-prone (fine, if you really think so, don't use them), and that data in Perl aren't s-expressions (I'm assuming that's what he's ranting about when he's implying that all Perl is good for is massaging input formats).

So pretty weak: CPAN is the supreme, far-and-away, no-other-reason-or-language-comes-close (at least in 2000) to use Perl.

lupin_sansei5• 19 years ago

Yes CPAN is perl's best kept secret. There's still nothing to touch it.

snorkel• 19 years ago

He sounds a tad disgruntled about his past jobs. He didn't answer the question "can lisp do what perl does easily?" because the answer is no: http://weitz.de/cl-ppcre/

herdrick2• 19 years ago

Wow - I use a lisp, but this argument is awful. Saying you can really quickly whip up something that works in Perl is an overwhelming recommendation. That the subsequent code in unmaintainable is a relatively tiny disadvantage.

From the linked-to post: "...the language rewards idiotic behavior... you can commit any dirty hack in a few minutes in perl, but you can't write an elegant, maintainabale program..." Sound familiar? That's the mating call of statically typed language programmer and the top-down 'software architect'. That's bad. And I'll admit, Scheme's libraries (I use Scheme) are in practice somewhat statically typed and fussy, which sucks.

I've never used Perl - maybe I should. BTW, is Ruby really just as good for quick 'duct tape' work and hacks? My very limited experience with Ruby made me think it was good, but not extraordinarily handy.

herdrick2• 19 years ago

'Maintainability' is the last refuge of the fussy language.

Can Lisp do What Perl Does Easily?

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