[Discuss] Interpreters vs Compilers

[Deryk Barker]

Darren Duncan wrote:
> At 8:31 PM -0700 3/13/08, Deryk Barker wrote:
>> I'll grant you superiority in handling regular expressions, but I 
>> would suggest that for anything over 50-100 lines perl becomes 
>> unwieldy - and rapidly unreadable.
>
> I would suggest that this is way off base.
You are free to suggest away...
>
> The readability or non-readability of code is mainly due to the 
> programmer, not the language.  Sure, some languages are exceptions to 
> this, meaning it simply isn't possible to make easily maintainable 
> code in it, but Perl is not one of those.
>
> I for one have written Perl programs tens of thousands of lines long 
> and they are still easy to understand and maintain even after I 
> haven't looked at them for years; easy for both myself and for other 
> people.
Darren, a good programmer can write maintainable code in virtually any 
language, but some languages make this easier and some more difficult. I 
maintain that perl falls in to the latter group. As does assembler - and 
I have written tens of thousands of lines of *that*, well structured and 
well commented but not *easily* maintainable.

In fact no program of that size is easily maintainable, whatever the 
language.
>
> Of course, I optimize for maintainability no matter what language I 
> program in.
>
> But the fact I am doing it in Perl with little hassle, and likewise 
> are many other people, speaks to contradict what you said about Perl 
> being unuseable for non-trivial programs.
I didn't say "unuseable" I said unwieldy.