%%%'' [Perl] combines the worst aspects of [C], [BASIC] and LineNoise -- Anon'' 

 %%%'' I don't like [Perl] either. I got about ten pages into the manual (somewhere around the "you are not supposed to understand this" part) before I started to think I was having my leg pulled. Then I discovered [Python]. ... --GlynWebster''%%% 

 ''Heathens and philistines, all of you! :) A language is only bad if it is not expressive enough. If it is, and Perl is plenty expressive, then it's the programmer who makes it what it is.'' "If it was possible to write programs in English, we would discover that programmers can't write English" --LarryWall ''[Perl] is easy to abuse because it's so expressive you can do things in any number of ways. Unfortunately, it is so easy to successfully say something the computer will understand that few people bother to think about how to say it ''well''. [Python] is entirely on the other extreme of the spectrum, and I find that extraordinarily obnoxious.'' --AristotlePagaltzis 

  

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 ''That you can change the sequence of things in a sentence - that is what my point is about. It does not let you chose between "I want to say the same thing differently depending on the situation" vs "Depending on the situation, I want to say the same thing differently" or even "Differently do I want to say the same depending on the situation". Neither is the verbosity is up to the programmer to choose in to [Python]. I find it very frustrating how [Python] doesn't let me get to the point - and no, that doesn't mean my [Perl] code is compact and incomprehensible, au contraire. I recently [argued such a point|http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=239615] with RandalSchwartz (who originated the term "[Perl] hacker"). [Perl] gives you the freedom to do what__ever__ you want. The problem, as the LarryWall quote I cited hints at, is more due to the fact that, well, the majority of programmers are mediocre at best, so [Perl] is a dangerous tool in their hands. It doesn't constrain bad habits at all so they end up writing horrid [Perl] code, where [Python] would have forced them to follow a decent style. Why's that a problem? Because an advanced programmer who (should) no longer be in need of those tight confines can't escape them. [Perl] is not a language to learn programming with; it's a language to get your job done. Just like [Pascal] is a neat language for a beginner to start out with, but not for an expert to get things done in. --AristotlePagaltzis'' 

  

 The thing with Pascal is that it was impossible to do most things. Standard Pascal didn't treat files like most newer OS's did (a stream of bytes? wazzat?), but it's big failing was that the size of the array is part of the type, and there was no way to write a generic function to handle arrays of varying sizes. Since strings were a kind of array, you couldn't write a function to take a generic string. Sure, langauges like TurboPascal resolved most of these issues in incompatible ways. Delphi shows that Pascal can be a nice language when "touched up".