[clue-tech] Happy new year

[Jed S. Baer]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:03:27 -0600
Collins Richey wrote:

> Some of my favorites from a list of 50 quips on the topic of
> programming.
> 
> 24. "PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent
> amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil, perpetrated by
> skilled but perverted professionals."
> - Jon Ribbens
> 
> 23. "Programming is like kicking yourself in the face, sooner or later
> your nose will bleed."
> - Kyle Woodbury
> 
> 22. "Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA
> encryption."
> - Keith Bostic
> 
> Happy New Year and stay warm.

I'm well and truly ready with fortified egg nog.

My favorite language still is Macro-11.

I want to like Perl. I want to be good at Perl. But Perl messes with my
head. Larry Wall wrote that one of the great things about Perl was that
you could typically write what you mean, and Perl would understand it and
do what you intended. That never worked for me. Perhaps because, after
learning and writing a fair number of older languages, my version of "what
I mean" just doesn't fit with Perl semantics, even when by all
appearances (to my reading), I'm doing it the way Perl expects it.

Back in 1984, I learned Fortran working on a Vax. Previously, I had been
a COBOLer. My boss, upon reading my code, remarked that I was living
proof that it was possible to write COBOL in Fortran. I grew out of it.

Working in assembly language was like an epiphany. And maybe that says
something about why I find little attraction in object orientation. I'm
sure that if I spent enough time working in it, I'd be fine with it.

I like PHP, in general, but it's kind of messy.

-- 
Ok, so we should be thinking of a lovable, cuddly, stuffed penguin
sitting down after having gorged itself on herring. Still with me? 
 -- Linus Torvalds