When I grow up, I'll be a Perl Programmer! (78)

40 Name: #!/usr/bin/anonymous : 2006-04-29 08:29 ID:XXdYtRmU

A hobbyist will download sample programs from the internet. I did this with Java. I kept buying books so I could follow the programs. The book stack is almost 3 feet high now. Java Core, Java GUI, Java Swing, Java Beans, Java AWT, Java Kiss My Ass, Java Never Again.

Some language "guardians" learned from that and try to keep their languages small. Lua and FORTH are the best examples I can think of. FORTH founder Moore is an extremist at removing redundancy. He has a complete system: OS, GUI API, apps, etc in less that 1 MB. FORTH is still tricky to learn though. (http://ficl.sourceforge.net/)

A hobbyist can make things easier on himself by choosing one of the languages that are deliberately kept small. Lua is my choice. And I remember something about Pascal and TCL language definitions fitting on 1 or 2 pages. (freepascal.org) Turbo Pascal was fun back in the 80s because it compiled instantly.

But Perl is the opposite of this keep-it-small idea. It can be a real struggle to follow a sample Perl program that I find on Google.

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