Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> writes:
> Gak!!!! I *hate* "clever" programming.
>
> The next person (who may not be an expert in the language) that
> reads the code and modifies it, can do so with a higher likelihood
> of not adding new bugs.
If you have the capability to program quickly, but feel constrained
to program slowly to accommodate some unknown future reader, you are
only hurting yourself and whoever you are writing the code for.
Further, if you have to hire someone to maintain code, you had better
hire a competent person, or you don't get my sympathy.
By the way, The best book for understanding Perl Idioms (what you call
"clever" programming) is Effective Perl Programming. At under 250
pages, it is relatively thin.
Highly recommended.
>> Perl assumes you are reasonably intelligent.
>
> That is incredibly condescending.
>
> They may assume that humans are fallible, but really, what language
> *really* assumes that you are stupid?
I can be condescending without meaning to. I do get frustrated,
though, by these arguments about Perl enabling un-maintainable code.
If you or your programmer creates unmaintainable code, you have a
problem.
If you or your programmer doesn't understand the language being used,
you've got a problem.
I wouldn't hire a newbie Python programmer to maintain my code, so
why should I feel sympathy for someone who hires an incompetent Perl
programmer?
I know quite a few extremely competent Perl programmers.
I've also heard people say over and over again that they weren't
capable of maintaining their own code. That reflects poorly on the
programmer rather than the language.
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Received on 07/12/03
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