I use C++ on a daily basis. It's my nine to five language, my wife if you will, and I am committed to her like a faithful, doting husband. But at night, on weekends, even for fleeting moments during the day, I conduct my illicit affair. What is it about this language that makes me behave so? Is it her poetic beauty? Her sensuous flexibility and overt kinkiness? Or is it her indomitable charm, which she surely inherited from her charismatic father?
Perl has so many beautiful attributes. When C++ nags me about violating my const references, Perl lets me manipulate her thingys in whichever context I like. Perl understands me. She celebrates my virtues. While I am an amateur compared to her other lovers, she is forgiving of my clumsy ineptitude, guiding me one step at a time from
for ($i=0; $i<=$#ARGV; $i++) {
$arg=$ARGV[$i];
open FOO, $arg;
while ($line=<FOO>) {
print $line; ...
to
while (<>) { print; }
Even when I think I've discovered all she has to offer, Perl opens a new chapter in her Kama Sutra. There are Objects, Typeglobs, FileHandles, Modules, Sockets, Regexps, and the most tantric of all, Hashes. She is layered like a sweet, succulent onion.
I think C++ is jealous. She likes to dress herself up with templates and iterators, but she can be so frumpy, even scrubbed with all those typedefs. C++ could never entice me into a night of wild, passionate coding. She needs to be compiled, linked, and debugged over and over. I can spend myself on Perl without the aid of a compiler, and yet somehow be drawn back in for another hour, two, or more, until the sun rises and I have to return to my devoted spouse.
What's more, Perl is always reinventing herself. There's 5.0, 5.8, 6.0. Each time her linguistic prowess gains new potency. My heart yearns to understand her better, to gain some insight into what feeds her rhythms. She is the embodiment of linguistic beauty. I pour over her secret man pages, her pods; I have even befriended her pet camel, and every encounter draws me deeper into her mystery.
Eventually, I will be found out. And I will have to choose. But until then, my illicit affair will continue, and I will remain inescapably enslaved to her tied hashes and blessed sockets.