Adam Tauno Williams wrote: > On Tue, 2010-12-14 at 15:33 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote: >> On 12/14/2010 3:01 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: >> >> As to Perl.. though it still is my preferred language for getting >> >> things done (mainly because I understand it that I first think out >> >> problems in Perl then convert to other languages), I have seen some >> >> bad, really bad Perl code.. >> > And your point is? I consider the fact that *every* *single* *time* >> > tomcat crashes ("you cannot have null pointer exceptions in java", the books >> > all said), the stack trace is 150 or 200 calls deep. Show me something >> > written in C, or C++, or perl, or php, or... that's that bad. >> That's not really a language problem - that's a programmer assuming that >> exceptions won't happen and not bothering to catch them in appropriate >> places. But when does tomcat crash anyway? <snip> >> If you don't like java's verbosity, you might like groovy. You can, for >> example, print items from a database in about 3 lines. >> http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GROOVY/Tutorial+6+-+Groovy+SQL >> (and from any database type that has a jdbc driver, and from any >> platform that runs java). > > Yes, but reference the preceding paragraph "programmer assuming that > exceptions won't happen". The i-can-do-it-in-three-lines [a real > favorite of Pythonistas] claim should always make one shiver - because > it means the code doesn't manage errors (and is thus bad code). Um, yeah - that's suitable for a hack, but *never* beyond that. As I said, nothing stops bad/inexperienced programmers from writing dreadful code, other than training and experience... including the experience of having someone else jump on them for writing crap. mark