Fear and loathing of the "perification" of Smalltalk

Peter William Lount peter at smalltalk.org
Thu Sep 13 21:34:41 UTC 2007


Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> Jason Johnson wrote:
>> On 9/13/07, Paolo Bonzini <paolo.bonzini at lu.unisi.ch> wrote:
>>> Evolution does not mean perlification; on the contrary, if Randal 
>>> Schwartz is in this mailing
>>> list we might have something to learn from him and Perl.
>>>
>>> Paolo
>>
>> Perl isn't really relevant anymore.  The only thing it has every
>> really had to teach is what not to do.
>
> Ruby is as much Perl as it is Smalltalk.
>
> Paolo
>
Hi,

I most certainly am open to learning from Randal Schwartz or Larry Wall
(the inventor of Perl) anytime that they are willing to teach or simply
converse. While I don't like twisted syntax it obviously works for the
Perl people (and many others).

I'm certainly open to learning even from you Paolo. ;--)

I only picked on Perl for coining the pejorative "perlification" since
it's pretty bad and I know it a bit better than other languages, and
I've already written some articles about it. Oops a quick google search
finds that I didn't coin the phrase, as others beat me to it, so there
must be something to it after all out in the wider culture. It's good to
know that it's not just Smalltalkers who are averse to Perl.

At least APL went out full hog and introduced it's own symbols, some if
not all drawn from Math. That's also what Mathematical has done. Oh
well, they can have their cryptic zoos all they want.

Smalltalk's big idea is messaging based upon unary, binary and keyword
syntax. It's best to maximize the potential out of that paradigm before
adding crufty goo. That is, in my humble view as someone who's used
Smalltalk professionally for 23+ years now.

Cheers,

Peter





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