| RHF Joke Archives |

This has been percolating in the back of my mind for a while. It's a scene from _The Empire Strikes Back_, reinterpreted to serve a valuable moral lesson for aspiring programmers.

EXTERIOR: DAGOBAH--DAY 
           With Yoda strapped to his back, Luke climbs up one of the 
        many thick vines that grow in the swamp until he reaches the 
        Dagobah statistics lab. Panting heavily, he continues his 
        exercises--grepping, installing new packages, logging in as 
        root, and writing replacements for two-year-old shell scripts 
        in Python. 

YODA: Code!  Yes.  A programmer's strength flows from code maintainability. 
      But beware of Perl.  Terse syntax... more than one way to do it... 
      default variables.  The dark side of code maintainability are they. 
      Easily they flow, quick to join you when code you write.  If once 
      you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, 
      consume you it will. 

LUKE: Is Perl better than Python? 

YODA: No... no... no.  Quicker, easier, more seductive. 

LUKE: But how will I know why Python is better than Perl? 

YODA: You will know.  When your code you try to read six months from 
      now. 

| RHF Joke Archives |