MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-11-21 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] Perl vs. PHP
|
On Sat, Nov 20, 2004 at 10:48:39PM -0500, Contrarian wrote:
> > The differences between the two are extenssive and always lead to a flame war.
>
> true, but this means that languages differences never get discussed
> a newbie on a *Perl* list deserves better
>
The problem with this is that a young programmer really first needs a
generic introduction to programming, regardless of the language, before
one can engage into a serious long conversation about the pluses and minuses
of different platforms and languages. Unfortunately, they are most often
trying to get their sea legs without the kind of formal training needed, and
this feeds these flame wars to the point where they are not only unproductive,
but become redundent and useless.
As an example, the problem described here, the missing case syntax, is at best
a very minor detail in the course of evaluating programming tools, but this
individual is focused on it because, frankly, it is what he knows.
PHP is much more C like than Perl, and in my opinion, not in a good way. It's
largely a C hack by programmers without a very broad background in language design
and yet it is ready available to C programmers, including and especially the part
under the hood. And this is the case despite the fact that PHP was originally written
in Perl.
Almost every major programming language was designed to leverage some sort of laugauge feature
from in it's core design. Some of the best languages are flatout prototypes which have
gotten out of control in the wide ;)
smalltalk was designed to demonstrate Object orientation priniciples.
C was designed to leverage structured programming for assemble. C++ was
designed to give an Object orientated interface to C. Perl was designed to
give a human linguistics syntax to a bunch of shell tools and broadened structured
language design to the scripting environment. Python was designed to leverage a
completely object orientated syntax to a scripting environment. LISP was designed
to program without limitations on basic lamda calcules and computing theory and so on.
Other languages have been developed more to fill a pressing need, and language design
comes later. PHP is an example of this, as are other useful languages like, Visual
Basic, TCL and others. It's fairly useless to discuss language design with some
advocates of these languages. The design is besides the point with them and I can
turn blue in the face and say that PHP doesn't have real references, because when those
programmers aren't being obtuse and what a refernece really means, they otherwise really
ust don't care.
If they have limited programmign expereince or training, then it's even more the case.
C'est la vie.
Ruben
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