Interesting Quote

[Jonathan Ellis]

On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 11:03:58 -0600, "Hans Fugal" <hans at fugal.net> said:
> Yup. You're absolutely right. I say these things all the time. I don't
> see how it negates the fact that a lot of smart people write a lot of
> useful programs in perl, which is my point. They do it in java too, and
> python, and ruby, and C and C++ and even Cobol. A language is just a
> language.

This is the standard argument used to defend stuff that sucks.  Yes, all
languages are turing complete.  Nevertheless,

- some languages are better for specific purposes (e.g. erlang and
concurrency)
- some languages are better generalists than others, too

Perl is a good awk + sed replacement.  The problem is when people start
using it as a generalist language because they don't know better.

-Jonathan