Language functionality (was: Re: another mysterious segfault)

[Tim Nelson]

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, Mark Burgess wrote:

> Speed has nothing to do with it. Cfengine was written in C bcause there
> was no alternative when I started cfengine. But even a scripting
> language will not help avoid a seg fault, if it is caused by a pathology
> of the system. I know people have this irrational belief in perl as
> language for everything, but you just can't do serious programming in
> perl. It's too primitive as a language.

	I find this an interesting perspective, because I believe Perl is 
one of the most advanced languages (ie. the opposite of primitive).  I've 
thought of some possibilities, and I'm interested in which one is true.

1.      You know of features available in other programming languages (eg.
        Lisp macros) that Perl doesn't have, and think that Perl is
        primitive due to not having them.  I find this unlikely compared
        to C, unless you're comparing with a version of Perl earlier than
        5, but I'll believe it if Mark indicates that this is what he's
	thinking. 
2.	You believe Perl is primitive due to the way that things like OO
        and case statements are implemented (and I agree that they could
        be improved; see Perl 6 :) ), ie. you simulate them using other
	functionality. 
3.	You have some other definition of primitive, of which I am
        unaware.
4.      Something else I haven't thought of

	This might be slightly OT, but I use cfengine because it's more 
expressive (ie. less code = more functionality) than any other language in 
this problem domain.  I use Perl for the same reason elsewhere.  I'm just 
wondering if I've missed something, which is why I'm asking if Mark (B) 
could take a moment to indicate which of the four options above is true.

        :)

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