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? > > And then there was the guy I worked with in the late eighties, who > > converted a 3000-line RPGIII program to a 600 line RPGII program, while I > > went from a 2200-line COBOL program to 600+ lines.... > 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).