Comments on: Science Prodigy Zhao Bowen

By: L. C. Rees

L. C. Rees — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 23:42:38 +0000

There also aren’t problems in the camel book — because it’s not a text book; it’s a reference.

He was talking about the Camel Book in the singular. And putting it down is the first solution to the problem.

By: Steve Johnson

Steve Johnson — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 12:06:48 +0000

“A few days later, Zhao returned. ‘I finished it,’ he said. ‘The problems are kind of boring. Do you have anything harder?’”

There also aren’t problems in the camel book — because it’s not a text book; it’s a reference.

By: Space Nookie

Space Nookie — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 03:29:23 +0000

This is that thing where the media starts talking about something you know personally and you laugh at what a bunch of idiots they are, and then they change the subject and you go back to assuming that they’ve done their homework and you can trust what they have to say.

By: Ross

Ross — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 23:57:59 +0000

Let’s not leap to judge these Perl comments without considering the lens through which we read them.

Anglophones have the benefit of an alphabet the elements of which serve as symbolic markers for sounds. Chinese have an ideographic written language, which are deep abstractions of pictures of ideas. While this has enormous benefits (the guys from Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing have no idea what the other guy is saying, but they all read exactly the same intent in a given sequence of symbols. (Needless to say, this doesn’t work with German, English and French.)

Perl is more like a Western symbolic alphabet than Chinese. This would tend to ramp up the average Chinese evaluation of its complexity. Turn the tables: if there was a Chinese programming language whose symbols were deeply abstract pictures for actions, how quickly would a mono-lingual anglophone pick it up?

But, yeah: Perl is pretty basic, no pun intended.

By: Contemplationist

Contemplationist — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 19:09:00 +0000

Haha. Exactly right. I was scratching my head when I read about Perl’s ‘complexity.’ Sure it’s complex in a deranged way like L.C. Rees above noted, but you can get cracking on code after an hour or so of tutorials.

By: L. C. Rees

L. C. Rees — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:57:30 +0000

True. The Camel Book is large. This makes it sound like a complete set of encyclopedias.

Perl isn’t complex. It’s deranged. I’m advised that, if you drink the ~~Kool~~ Flavor-Aid, obfuscated line noise comes to seem normal.

By: Pax Dickinson

Pax Dickinson — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 17:20:15 +0000

“Perl is a famously complicated language that takes university students a full year to learn.”

Umm, what? No.