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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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Comments make Perl unreadable, says Paul Graham 2 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • I don't think that Perl code needs comments more than any other code.

    This is where you're getting tripped up. :)

    Here's my version of Graham's logic:

    1. Lots of hackers write terse, fancy, etc. code that's hard to decipher when they come back to it 6 months later.
    2. The way to make your code easier to remember isn't by adding comments everywhere, but by reworking the code to be simpler and easier to understand.
    3. Perl is so fucking nasty that there's no way to do Step 2; therefore, so you're forced to add more comments than in other languages.

    I'm going to guess that you two disagree on the last point. :) I'm also going to guess that he'll say if it isn't obvious why Perl code is so fucking nasty then it's too late for you because you've already drank too much of the Perl kool-aid.

    But it's hard to know for sure.

    • I guess that could be that point, even if I don't agree with it.

      As I've been thinking about this and trying to get into his mind, and I have the feeling he may be talking about people who tried Perl for a couple of days and then stopped. Six months later they can't remember anything from those two days. That's not surprising.

      Or, he's talking about people who tried to understand somebody else's code and gave up after a couple of days. Well, I have that problem with a lot of code no matter the language.
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