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Postings from March 2021
On Sat, 27 Mar 2021 00:36:52 +0100, Chris Prather <chris@prather.org> wrote: > > > On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 6:42 PM Philip R Brenan <philiprbrenan@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. >> >> Antoine de Saint-Exupery > I love this quote, it's one of the one's Stevan recited frequently regarding the design of Moose. > > On the one hand `trim()` is expanding the number of builtin functions and littering the namespace with extra things >to remember. A differing view is that that is that `trim()` removes a common use of `s/^\s+|\s+$//g` and >everything that entails the user to understand about Perl's implementation of regular expressions for the simple >common case of "removing starting and trailing whitespace". > > Interpreting this maxim with the idea that syntax is what should be taken away, you end up with the lambda >calculus, tinyBF, and OISC computers where they are beautiful in their simplicity, but maximize the amount of >information the programmer has to maintain while programming. Interpreting this maxim the other way you end up >with ... well the common punchline when I was starting out was "Perl." > > Antoine de Saint-Exupery isn't famous for writing empty books, he's famous for an expressive use of poetic >language that contained enough, but no more. Perl is certainly not a minimalist language, but in my experience it >tries (sometimes unsuccessfully) to allow for an expressive use of poetic language that minimizes how much state >the developer has to maintain in their head at a time. > > -Chris This is a beautiful email. -- With regards, Christian WaldeThread Previous | Thread Next