Michael Carman <mjcarman / home.com> wrote:
>Terrence Brannon wrote:
>> 
>> [C]onceptually similar operations do not map to the same name 
>> in Perl. Why does this make Perl a better and not worse language,
>> than the intended replacement to Perl, Ruby, which is in fact highly
>> regular in all places where Perl isn't [...]

>Most of the responses have centered on your example, not the subject of
>your question. Perl is non-orthogonal by design.

[snip man page quote]

Larry writes about the natural language concepts in Perl:

   http://www.wall.org/~larry/natural.html


>IIRC, Larry Wall has referred to Perl as being a "diagonal" language.


He also said in a Dr. Dobb's Journal interview, Feb 1998:

   Well, there are many different definitions of artistic beauty. 
   It can be argued that it's symmetry, which in a computer 
   language might be considered orthogonality. It's also been 
   argued that broken symmetry is what is considered most 
   beautiful and most artistic and diverse. Symmetry breaking 
   is the root of our whole universe according to physicists, 
   so if God is an artist, then maybe that's his definition 
   of what beauty is. 


>IMHO, orthogonality is overrated.


Sorry I can't find a citation for this (paraphrased) Larry quote:

   symmetry is overrated, overrated is symmetry

I think it was on a mailing list where I saw it...


-- 
    Tad McClellan                          SGML consulting
    tadmc / metronet.com                     Perl programming
    Fort Worth, Texas