There's more than one way to do it (TMTOWTDI or TIMTOWTDI, pronounced ''Tim Toady'') is a
Perl
Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...
programming motto. The language was designed with this idea in mind, in that it “doesn't try to tell the programmer how to program.” As proponents of this motto argue, this philosophy makes it easy to write concise statements like
print if 1..3 or /match/
or the more traditional
if (1..3 or /match/)
or even the more verbose:
use English;
if ($INPUT_LINE_NUMBER >= 1 and $INPUT_LINE_NUMBER <= 3 or $ARG =~ m/match/)
This motto has been very much discussed in the Perl community, and eventually extended to There’s more than one way to do it, but sometimes consistency is not a bad thing either (TIMTOWTDIBSCINABTE, pronounced ''Tim Toady Bicarbonate'').
In contrast, part of the
Zen of Python is, "There should be one— and preferably only one —obvious way to do it."
See also
*
Extensible programming Extensible programming is a term used in computer science to describe a style of computer programming that focuses on mechanisms to extend the programming language, compiler and runtime environment. Extensible programming languages, supporting this ...
*
Don't repeat yourself
"Don't repeat yourself" (DRY) is a principle of software development aimed at reducing repetition of software patterns, replacing it with abstractions or using data normalization to avoid redundancy.
The DRY principle is stated as "Every piece of ...
*
You aren't gonna need it
References
External links
Perl, the first postmodern computer languageby
Larry Wall
Larry Arnold Wall (born September 27, 1954) is an American computer programmer and author. He created the Perl programming language.
Personal life
Wall grew up in Los Angeles and then Bremerton, Washington, before starting higher education at ...
There Is More Than One Way To Do Iton the
WikiWikiWeb
The WikiWikiWeb is the first wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by programmer Ward Cunningham to accompany the Portland Pattern Repository website discussing software design patterns. The name ''WikiWikiWeb'' ori ...
Perl 6, the little sister of Perl 5released on Christmas Day, 2015, by
Larry Wall
Larry Arnold Wall (born September 27, 1954) is an American computer programmer and author. He created the Perl programming language.
Personal life
Wall grew up in Los Angeles and then Bremerton, Washington, before starting higher education at ...
and the Perl 6 community.
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Software development philosophies
Perl