[Discuss] Interpreters vs Compilers

[David Bronaugh]

Deryk Barker wrote:
> 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...
I'm currently (still) writing a system composed of ~5000 lines of Perl, 
and ~7000 lines of C++. I'll hack on the C++ any day compared to the Perl.

Now, maybe that's just because they handle different tasks, and the Perl 
task is less pleasant; or maybe it's because I'm a better C++ programmer 
than a Perl programmer; but I'll contend that it's because the language 
makes writing maintainable code a pain in the ass.
>>
>> 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.
And I'll agree with that. Python has its quirks (whoever decided that 
range should be [0, n) instead of [0, n] should be taken out back and 
shot) but I prefer it as a programming language to perl.

David